there is a bug xbox is still infront :)

To be fair, it WAS like 3am here... Gimme a break!

No they didn't really pull out all the stops.  Microsoft seemed to settle for profit in 2010 and didn't agressively market on price as they could have at the time.  We'll know more over the next few weeks but generally it looks like Microsoft have tailed 360 support over the last 18 months shifting support early to the next Xbox.  I think the Xbox brand is pretty safe in the America's, they'll likely still not do very well in Japan next gen so the battle ground will be Europe, which frankly is Sony's to lose.  People act like launching at the same time would be a detriment for microsoft when in fact it means they will not suffer the problems of people waiting to see what the competition have to offer like last gen.

This is going off topic though, the point of the thread is when the PS3 will outsell the 360 which is clearly within the month according to the current figures. 

And even if you copy/paste your post in 100 other threads, you'd still be wrong. Can't believe it's 2013 and this argument is still in some people's heads.

Microsoft didnt agressively market because they barely had anything to market outside of the Kinect from 2011 outside of two games since the Kinect launched in Gears and Halo on replay. Sony beat them basically the whole year until fourth quarter when people knew they could get their hands on a discounted Xbox system. Microsoft will cut the price of the 360 at E3 or their reveal. They haven't cut the price competitively in a while. If they do its for brief periods of time to screw with the consumer base and get quick sales before bringing it back to normal. I have a feeling looking at the sales now that they'll try again but they will drop the price for good. This is the final measure to which Microsoft has pull out all the stops against Sony. In the end all Sony had to do was price their console competitively and outpace them in making games as they always do. It was a matter of time, but when you have a casual device that sells twenty million....well it kind of slows things down for the competition...wouldn't you agree? It was tortoise vs hare fight and sometimes the race isn't always for the swift.

A Pyrrhic victory.

To achieve this victory Sony were forced to drop the console price much faster than MS did, they had to pump out first party exclusives and they had to keep their online service free of charge, even launching a service that showers its customers with free games, while MS confidently kept hoarding money with Xbox Live.

My point was simply that they really hadn't thrown everything at market share like Sony did in 2008/2009.  They didn't money hat any franchises, they didn't agressively push any risky new IP's, they didn't push the price down in Europe anywhere near enough despite figures clearly showing the demand has been waning for years.  Sony needed to come back where as Microsoft were content to cash in on their device and use this gen as a building block.  Nobody is going into next gen now thinking Microsoft will sell a console to you then abandon it in 4 years like last gen, they have given the brand a huge lift. 

The launch aligned sales prove it was a tortoise vs hare situation but at the end of the day Microsoft have made more money from their device, while Sony have kept their brand image that at one stage may have been at risk (which is potentially worth billions obviously for this gen).

P.S.  Just to educate those saying Microsoft is in third place again, it did actually finish in second last gen, not that it mattered given how far adrift they were.

In the end, it doesn't really matter which console finishes on top, its the consumers that matter and I think all 3 consoles have satisfied them. So it's a win for the people really :)

Best post in thread.

Who cares about a few thousands at this rate?

Ps3 owns this generation, not because the sales but because the games.

Anyway, i'm glad this generation every console has sold a lot, and we didn't have any Dreamcast.