Hmm. You're right. Forgot that 7th year was last year for 360 and that was its best one yet.

You know that topic Kowenicki started (think it was him anyway), tracking shipments per quarter (and then it shows the days of supply as well I think). Does anyone have the link to that? I've been trying to find it, but can't remember the name or which forum it was in here. I'd be really appreciative if someone could link me to it. I'm interested in trying to see if there's any pattern in terms of shipments after each quarter compared to end of year sales (and also then seeing if you can estimate end of year sales based on any other reports given outside of the standard quarterly releases).

I've assembled a few additional charts concering the sales of each when launches are aligned. Each of these charts pertains to a line of best fit using different equations.

PS3 - Quadratic         360 - 4th degree polynomial

This graph obviously isn't practical for predicting the future of the 360 at all, but it fits the data reasonably well.

PS3 - Quadratic       360 - 3rd degree polynomial

This is much better at predicting a future trend for the 360 and actually is strikingly similar to the PS3's graph, albeit with a more shallow curve. This displays the legs of the 360 well so far.

PS360 - Both Linear

This trend displays the PS3's advantage YOY.

PS360 - Moving average (period 2)

This chart is all about averages. The 2-period approach, I thought, may fit well with the 360's polynomial curve.

Projections from the charts are ~8m for each console next year, I'm thinking ~9 million though.

Microsoft has done better than Sony during the generation and in preparation for this generation. Their timed exclusives, excellent software for development, online features such as early Netflix and strategic investments in high quality, high impact exclusives have really paid off and you can't forget about Kinect either. They went from a 24M console, multi billion dollar hole to a 70M console multi billion dollar surplus and still edged out Sony at the same time even though Sony was willing to lose billions in order to keep up. Nintendo is the obvious winner but Microsoft has really played the game well this time round and deservedly get the runner up prize.

Not necessarily.
For all sakes and purposes, the core value of Kinect is already sold to the market: motion gaming with no hands.
Selling a enhanced product won`t make Kinect 1 and the 360 die an younger death than expected, because most people will have a cheaper alternative to the Kinect 2.0 for basically the same thing. Yes, Kinect 2.0 will be better but it won`t be different. That`s what, to me, hindered Move: better than Wii Remote with Motion Plus, but for the market it was nothing really new, so it failed to do for Sony what the Wii remote did for Nintendo and what Kinect did for MS.

I`m not saying i won`t be surprised but i`m not expecting Kinect 2.0 to be as successful as the first.

Wow, great charts and data analysis. I didn't realize that the PS3 had such a better start than the 360. I do remember that MS didn't sell the 10 million they hope and predicted they would the first year.

It also shows how much Kinect helped. It will be interesting to see how the next 10 months play out (assuming someone launches a new console next year.)

PS3 had a terrible start, no matter what spin you put on it, the only reason why it sold that good was the Playstation name alone, if the console wasn't so overpriced and gta remained an exclusive "sony stuffed that one up big time, ps3 would have done soooo much better.

Yes gta 4 came out in 2008, but microsoft were bragging about it back in 2006.

well a global release of PS3 would have PS3 closer to Wii.

The launch of the PlayStation 3 into the Japanese market on 10 November 2006, 17 November in the United States 2006, European and other (with few exceptions) world markets in the first half of 2007.

so, if it were not for the shortages, and PS3 had a more unified launch, then PS3 would have likely had a bigger lead in Europe, and a 10m unit lead over 360 globally.

o look at me, i'm reaching.

how is one peaking year 7 and one peaking year 6 make one good and one bad?

this will be the first year sine launch that the ps3 will be down yoy.

@OP:

Actually both had awful starts. But as PS3 started one year later (and in Europe even later), having an awful start allowed XB360 to build up a lead not too small despite having an awful start too, then both solved their worst problems and took up more than decently and closing the gap took PS3 far longer than it would if it started better.