The problem with the PS3 is a lot of its sales are from hard to track markets.  So i always expect the site to be constantly tweaking to try and estimate the PS3.  The 360 adjustments are always more of a puzzle as a lot of the consoles sales are in markets that are easier to track so I don't know why that keeps tracking off.

not really

Maybe what makes estimating XB360 sales more difficult is its less regular sales pattern, with MS pushing as strong as possible BF and Xmas sales, maybe these big seasonal marketing pushes make it more difficult for retailers to predict the amount needed, so they play safe to avoid shortages during the most important period for their business, if some units remain they can sell them later, they aren't perishable goods, but a missed Xmas sale is most probably lost and given to competitor retailers, so playing safe is the best choice. But it contributes to make both Xmas and successive Q1 sales more unpredictable.

It's possible.  More steady sales patterns are easier to forecast than spiky ones so that could be part of it.

Alby_da_Wolf said: hatmoza said: ZOMFG! Ballmer's firstborn!

sry off topic:

if you think about that, this guy and many others are mabye dead now after a suicide because the whole world is using these pics and i bet everyone around him knows about that. his life has to be horrible i really don't want to know how it went with this "popularity" and suicidal tendencies will grow a lot then.

crissindahouse said: Alby_da_Wolf said: hatmoza said: ZOMFG! Ballmer's firstborn!  sry off topic: if you think about that, this guy and many others are mabye dead now after a suicide because the whole world is using these pics and i bet everyone around him knows about that. his life has to be horrible i really don't want to know how it went with this "popularity" and suicidal tendencies will grow a lot then.

Not necessarily, luckily! Since Youtube and Facebook were created, many people on the net discovered their exhibitionist side, like to be known around even for not so positive reasons and aren't afraid anymore of publishing terrible photos and videos about themselves that in the past they'd just have destroyed. So the point should be whether that photo was originally published by the subject himself or not.

Then just think to Gabe Newell, it's much more probable that he'll be killed by his weight than committing suicide due to the countless jokes, caricatures and demotivational pictures about him. Same applies to Ballmer Sr.
About Newell, Ballmer Sr. and if that bloke really were Ballmer Jr., in these cases money and power help a lot.   

There is still a pretty decent chance that the PS3 won't pass the Xbox 360 during their sales lifetimes. I always keep it in the back of my mind that Microsoft made it a stated goal to come out of this generation in second place, they said this way back in 2008. A lot can change in the next 2-6 months, at this point the question to me is whether Microsoft lets Sony pass them, not whether Sony will choose to take second place.

We shouldn't forget that the Xbox 360 will likely always remain cheaper to manufacture than the PS3 given the universal memory bus of generic GDDR3, use of DVD and the lack of a mandatory HDD. They have the option of cutting the price of either Kinect or the 360 or pushing out a further hardware revision such as one which uses cartridges and thus dispenses with the need for an optical drive.

x360 and ps3? like achilles and the turtle (zeno) :)

Arrogance. And thinking you understand a shifting market when you don't. Same with Nintendo, they got too comfortable with their huge Wii success and look at them now, rich yes, but scrambling for consumer confidence. If you get too comfortable at the top, your competitors will lop your head off. Happens every time in any industry. Sony messed up big time, but we will only know if they learnt any lessons by observing their strategy with the next generation.

Well if you were to look at it in vacuum just in the first 3 months of the year PS3 has outsold 360 by about 850k. If that rate were to continue it would pass it some time in October or November. Of course the likelihood of a 360 price cut in that time frame is relatively high. But like I've stated in the past, the minimal impact of the price cuts in Spain and Australia last year suggest that one in Europe wouldn't have much of an impact either. The USA is a different story but last Holidays rather lousy numbers just cemented my belief that 360 is approaching saturation in that territory and a price cut there would yield similar results to DS's price cut in 2010. While I don't think a PS3 price cut is likely this year I wouldn't totally discount it. I'll say Q1 of next year.