History has shown that, so long as they're within reasonable range of each other, the weaker system is always the lead platform. But then, history has also always shown that the weakest system is always the winner, so that may be the reason for the general correlation (with the exception, the Wii, being due to the huge difference). I suppose that it's theoretically possible that the Xbox 3 or PS4 is within range of the Wii U, and outperforms it, and thus one of them becomes the lead platform.

Anyway, the thing to notice is that, most of the time, the Xbox 360 is the lead platform for 360/PS3 titles. It's because it's the weaker system - if they make a game that can run on the 360, they can be comfortably sure that it'll also run on the PS3.

I think with WiiU releasing, the DVD vs blu-ray issue is going to become more noticeable. I don't think it's going to affect THAT much, but there WILL be a few titles that the 360 misses out on due to that, but PS3 and WiiU both get them.

But they won't be the majority, at least not unless MS takes more than a year after WiiU's release to upgrade.

This. And no 20 minute mandatory installs -and it takes me all of 20 seconds to get up and swap a disc. And it took me exactly 5 minutes and 45 seconds to do the optional install of Skyrim to my harddrive.

Sony HAS to wait. Yeah, they can get more out of the PS3 than Microsoft can with the 360 but the difference is negligible by the vast majority of the world.

Nintendo had to go ahead and release the Wii U because their tech was way outdated. Personally, I think the Wii U should have been released a while back.

Microsoft is where they want to be. A comparably powerful machine that makes them money and gets a ton of third party support.

If Microsoft announces their next console, Sony is done. Either Sony will be competing with the old PS3 console that will appear to be outdated next to the "Next gen consoles" and won't be capable of running games that appear on the Next Xbox OR the Wii U (due to its unique controller)

OR

Sony (which is already hemorrhaging money like crazy) will attempt to launch a new console in attempts to keep up. The PS3 won't reach its full potential. Why would anybody work hard to push the older system to its limits when they can get superior results on the competition without even having to try? Install base? The 360 has virtually the same installed base so, as far as third parties go, there will be no motivation to push harder than the 360 is capable of.

Of all of the companies on the market, I think Sony is in the worst position BY FAR. They're in a lose/lose situation no matter what they do. The PS3 has just cost them so much.

You're right, but you're still wrong, it's cheaper.

Mastering is a one-time fee, so while it has a cost, it isn't that significant to the total production run.  Not only that but he cost of mastering is roughly the same regardless of whether it's a CD, DVD, or Blu-Ray disc.  In addition, once the master is completed, any subsequent reproduction that exists down the line is simply the cost of media.

Where the significant cost comes into play is the actual disc and art.  A DVD-R has a retail cost of roughly 20¢, a 25GB BD-R disc runs about $1.00.  So for a run of 1 million discs each, you're looking at a price difference of 60¢(20¢(x2) vs $1.00).  You tell me, which is more significant?  

Mastering:  $1,000/disc = $2,000.
Reproduction of DVDs:  2m @ 20¢ = $400,000
Grand Total:  $402,000

or

Mastering: $1,000/disc = $1,000
Reproduction of Blu-Ray Discs: 1m @ $1.00 = $1,000,000
Grand Total: $1,001,000

Don't look at the case to add to the cost either, a double-disc DVD case runs about 10¢ more at retail than a single-disc case.  That would make the difference in cost about $500,000 rather than $600,000.

Note:  While i mentioned the disc art in the cost of a disc, I didn't actually figure that into any pricing.  4-color screen-printed art would be the same regardless of the media type anyway, but when it comes down to the brass tacks, disc art is the most expensive per-disc cost (outside of a booklet) that exists in media reproduction.  The exception to this may be with Blu-Ray discs.

If they don't cut before the holiday, you'll hear about it in January.

Microsoft won't discuss the next Xbox until January, and when they start talking about the next Xbox, they'll do so after cutting the price of the current one in order to keep people buying the console before the launch of the next one.

So, unofficial holiday price drop, then official price drop, along with news of the next console.

The Xbox 360 has not been the weaker of the two systems.  If anything it is on par with the PS3 in terms of performance.  The PS3 does have the better CPU, but that CPU is hurt by the memory architecture and GPU.  Contrast that with the Xbox 360, which offers a better GPU and unified memory and its tri-core processor with six hardware threads compares rather favorably to the PS3. 

The reason the Xbox 360 is the lead platform for most third-party games is because it is the easiest of the two to program for.  Getting a game to work on the Xbox 360 is meaningless when porting it to the PS3 because in order to get the game to work on the PS3 you need to build the game so it takes advantage of the SPEs, that requires significant management of processing and resources. 

Some early 3rd-party games in the PS3 life-cycle were direct ports of the Xbox 360 version and they were horrible.  Instead of taking advantage of the SPEs, the games used the sole PowerPC core (PPE) for all the work.  The Cell isn't like a Intel processor with 8 cores or the Xbox 360s Xenon with 3 cores.  They would be symmetrical processors.  No, the Cell is a parallel processor that uses the PPE to manage the code running in the SPEs.  There is a lot more work involved in getting code to run on the PS3, which is why some games are led with the PS3 rather than the Xbox 360.

These multiple discs arguments are ridiculous. Nobody worried about production costs when Sega CD, PS1, PS2, and PC were getting multi discs games. Yet for some reason its a huge issue this gen? I think PS3 fans are to blame for this new "problem."

So you feel developers are going to think twice about putting games on the 360 because of storage limitations on DVDs. But I don't think using multiple discs is a big deal, especially if the platform is great at moving software. Most of the games you mentioned have performed better on the 360 than PS3. Most multiplat games in general perform better on the 360.

Look at The Witcher 2 for example. The developers apparently wanted to focus on one platform. Safe bet they chose the 360 because it has performed significantly better at selling WRPGs and its easier to work with according to developers. Which goes to show the amount of discs used isn't the biggest factor for choosing a platform.

Your logic doesn't make sense - one wouldn't develop a game for the easier-to-develop-for platform first, because it would mean more additional effort to make it work on the other console afterwards. The only reason to do that is if you're willing to drop support for the harder one, which evidence shows didn't happen - pretty much all of the big titles that weren't first-party or second-party were put on both systems.

Just as you don't make a game for the higher-power system first, because then you have to do extra work to get it working on the weaker system.

The PS3 was harder to develop for, sure, but the reason why it wasn't the lead platform was because it would be harder to port to the 360 from the PS3 than vice versa. And that means that there were power considerations, because there really wasn't anything else to distinguish between them.

So that's how it's gonna be, eh?  You're on my list!

*adds BasilZero to the list*