Most likely the gap is almost completely gone.  Tetton said he thought they were at 77M on Feb 21st.  But, let's play it safe and say they are only at 76M, instead.  This would put ~2.9M on shelves in Febuary, a slower month.  The max that VGC has had the PS3 at was 1.5M on shelves.  So, this would mean that the PS3 is AT LEAST ~1.4M undertracked. 

Now, MS announced the 360 was at 76M shipped on Feb 12th.  This would put ~1.7M on shelves.  A much more believable number, but let's just say the real number is 1.5M, too.  This would mean that the 360 is only 200K undertracked.

So, our new numbers would be PS3 - 74.6M and 360 - 74.7M.

I know, and it means nothing without knowing the exact numbers for each.

Is it really hard to understand (especially for some fans here) to understand that 360 only lead ps3 now because more than 1 year (Eu launch of ps3 was a delayed one) of head start?
PS3 beats 360 comprehensively by millions in launch aligned sales chart.
Deal with it.

But, we do for shipments.  At least from Febuary.  MS announced 26M in mid-Feb, while Tretton said 77M (he thought) in late-Feb.  Even if you say it really is 26M for Sony, it's obvious that Sony has either passed MS this quarter or will next quarter.  So, it still qualifies as being relevant in some MS fans' eyes, as it will happen before the launch of the new consoles. 

There's no spinning the numbers, it's your idiotic lack of logic. If the Xbox 360 starts sales an entire year earlier than the PS3, how the hell do you still say it's second place?

But sure, go ahead. Say it's third place. Doesn't matter, because at the end of the day Sony is racking in more cash with more consoles than Microsoft every year. But if calling PS3 "3rd place" make you sleep at night, good for you kid.

This post has been moderated by Axumblade

They think that others won because of Sony's failures. So to read others had luck that Sony had such a bad start. Now they don't see any mistakes by Sony, so it is clear to them that Sony will win next gen.

For people saying that Sony will definitely win next gen yes they are getting over confident, other than that I see nothing wrong with hyping up and getting excited about a new console.

It is in third place, as of current known numbers. 

You can't say a runner has won until he managed to overtake those in front of him. If a runner starts running after all the other runners, even if he's the fastest of them all, unless he overtakes 'em all, he's not going to get the gold.

Yes, the PS3 is running faster than the 360. But so far, it's still catching up. 

- This user was moderated for this post by amp316

Lets look at some points here :

1) 1 year headstart in sales
2) aligned launch dates sees ps3 outselling 360 consistently
3) sells more units per year
4) lower failure rate thus..
5) higher number of functional units in the retail stream

So yeah, by the numbers 360 is ahead of the ps3, but by logic it's solid third, and even the one point it's ahead in won't be the case for much longer, enjoy it while it lasts.

But hey, let me predict your argument in a few months time 'ahead in the US and that's the biggest market so it's still second place, doesn't matter if ps3 has sold more'

To op, it's all relative, i've seen just as many nintendo/microsoft fans getting overconfident that their system will be better than the ps4 recently as i have, seeing overconfident sony fans, but let me paint a little picture in your mind.

Microsoft's console launched a year ahead of the playstation 3, the playstation 3 launched at a rediculously high price when it finally came out and was hated by the media and developers, for the price, sonys arrogance and the architecture respectively, despite that massive disadvantage and being hated for neigh on two years from launch, 6 years on it's now only around 1 million behind this generations 'golden child' the xbox 360, all that advantage only gives microsoft a 1m sales advantage?, it doesn't matter what microsoft pull out of the bag, if both the ps4 and 720 launch within months of each other, the 720 will lag behind from the get go, or soon after in global sales, sure american sales will probably see the 720 on top, but as time goes on the gap between 720 and ps4's sales will increase dramatically - ps4 is launching in the same timeframe, with both media and developers praising the machine, theres no handicap this time round, microsoft have no advantage, you can try to spin that however you want but it's just basic fact.

With that in mind, the only real contender to the ps4 right now is the WiiU, and that hinges solely on software as the hardware is already sat in homes waiting to run the games.