Well, friends I have been following vgchartz for many years now, and in my eyes it has always been Wii is selling record sales for a Nintendo home console, and the HD twins are kinda tied.

But I want to have a better understanding of what actually happened. Was PS3 always 2nd throughout the generation, were they always so relatively close, and what were the factors that affected the gap along the way. Which regions cause the 360 to be so powerful despite the PS3 lead in Japan, and were models or pricecuts players in the gap competition.

Sony and MS fans, please explain.

Note: When the new charts are added to VGChartz, we'll get the cummulative sales graphs for the Wii, PS3 and 360 and compare them globally and then region by region. It would be awesome to then annotate them with events describing what happened.

360 started with an 8million lead and it has slowly closed to 2million. Unsure as to what you wish to know specifically. Slim breathed life into PS3 sales and the Kinect made sure the PS3 never broke ahead. Simple as that I believe.

Well, I put this in the Microsoft discussion by mistake... This is meant as a general discussion question. I might just remake the thread...

I'd like to know the specifics. Like what region caused the global gap to shrink more. Was it PS3's catchup in the US, or in Europe, or both.

So the 8M lead, was that at the release of the PS3?

the 360 afaik actually started with a ~5.5 million lead when the PS3 was released (in US,JPN - European release was ~4 month later), but that first christmas at $599 (or $499 for the 20GB model which was in even lower demand and was quickly discontinued) really widened the gap a lot as the 360 sold much better

edit:

too bad I can't find the graphs anymore that this site offered some years ago ..  it seems to me the free users lost a lot of features that made the site good before

The chartz are rather inaccurate, so they're virtually even already we just don't know the specifics.

Seriously everyone should stop posting and making threads about the Xbox360 - PS3 gap until shipment numbers come out for this quarter. Those numbers should help to give a clearer picture of the sales numbers.

It has nothing to do with this quarters' numbers, I wanted to know the history of it.

Anyways, in the process of posting this "unnecessary" thread, I've prepared something beautiful for all of you. Link on the way, will post very soon.

Yeah, its totally unbecoming of a site like this to contain sales threads, rumors or potentially unsubstantiated gaming news.

People should be able to discuss matters regardless of current status.

Here are resources that can help some of you explain it to me, please enjoy:
http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=142350