This is my first post to this group. I've been reading for a while, and just joined recently to start some discussions and get some thoughts.

First: we all know the Wii is in a league of its own right now. It is expanding the gaming universe, including more people than ever before, which is good for the business, in general.

When I think of the Wii, I always imagine it as the gateway drug to the gaming world. People play the Wii, become interested in gaming in general, then look for what else the gaming world has to offer. This strategy makes the Wii, most likely, the console winner of this gen.

But what about the 360 and the PS3?

Right now, I don't own any next gen systems, but I've played them all. My sister's boyfriend has the PS3, a bunch of friends and my brother have the 360, and I have another friend who owns the Wii. I currently have a PS2, DS Lite, and a PSP.

The PS3 is struggling. The release list is skimpy with big names not coming out until July with LAIR, and in August/September, Heavenly Sword, I believe.

The 360 is clobbering everyone with their software offering. The attach rates are through the roof. Early reports are in that the Elite 360 has sold out at many places (Amazon, Circuit City, Best Buy, Costco, etc). 

The 360 should have a decent April NPD showing when the Elite is counted, but I think the PS3 will suffer. The Wii should easily do another 1 million Worldwide, perhaps 3/400,000 in the NA alone.

At what point do you think Sony will make a turn-around and start gunning to take marketshare away from the 360? Or, do you think more and more developers will go cross-platform between the two? The biggest exclusive the PS3 holds is MGS4. If they lose that, I think the PS3 won't ever catch the 360 in NA.

The performance of the 360 in NA/Japan is nearly identical to the performance of the PS3 in NA/Japan for March. The difference is miniscule, making Europe Sony's safehouse. How long can they survive with this breakdown?

Thoughts, rebuttals, etc.?

By the way, I enjoy this forum and finally decided to take part in it. I look forward to the discussions. 

If and when PSN becomes as good as xBox live, there will be little point in getting a xBox 360 (xBox live being it's major strength and PSN being free). This is because there will be fewer exclusives this generation as the cost of making games has gone up, so you need to consider the other factors, as exclusive games are going to be less of a factor. The PS3 supports HD, which may be of advantage to a few users, however it also uses motion control, and although it cannot be used like the Wiis controllers, it does make driving/flight games for instance, easier to play for non-gamers. The PS3 also has a large hard-disk so is useful as a media centre aswell.

how much i like to know how the future will be like, i hate to predict stuff, brings back bad memories (bets and such). But according to the knowledge i possess, the ps3 will get its momentum whenever the price is going down,it's not about the games, just the price really, people buy it anyway. as for the 360 the future is quite strange. things can go really well with halo 3 releasing, but things could also go extremely bad since probably the most halo fans around have already purchased their 360's.

 so in short, im not the one for the predictions :D

I think that Sony know that it has to do something, and pretty soon. With Motorstorm meant to be one of Sony's best games this year, and such poor March NPD figures, they might have to rush some of their games, as well as a price drop. April figures will be even worse, as will june, although from July I think that its going to turn around and the 360 will be massacred. For the price drop, I could see it happening very soon. As the emotion engine has now been removed, the price can decrease a bit, as well as the fact that the blu-ray laser diode has decreased in price. As the 80GB is clearly near (Kotaku had some leaked pictures of the case) i think that that will take the 60GB's place at $600 and the 60GB will be at $650. The reason I think that the 360 will be massacred in the second half of the year is because by then PSN will be as good as XBL and free, so the 360's best feature is gone. People say that Halo 3 will be the best game, but I can see Killzone being better, as Sony has been working on it for ages. As well as this, Sony has great games in all areas, which are nearly always the best in thet genre.

The way I see is which system hit the $250 mass market price first will get the bigger share of the market. as we see on 360's sale after christmas, even with quality software released each month, the 360 continue to have sluggish sales. rather this slow sale is due to people holding off for the elite version, we'll know when april and may data is out. no matter how many kick ass killer title will release on each system, its just to hard for the general casual gamer to justisfy a 400-600 purchase to play game on. The Wii does compete xbox and ps3, just not hte graphical end user, but they are compete for the total market share. MS and Sony will have to do something to slow down Wii's momentum before nintendo lead too far off, because dev will allocate most of their resource to the Wii if nintendo have a bigger market share. If you are the developer, what do you choose??? bigger install base (less risk) + lower development cost or huge development cost + small install base (more risk) e.g a game cost 5mil to develope on wii with a 6.5 mil install base or a game cost 20mil with 10 million install base??? you can make 2-3 games on wii with the same amount you spend developing for the 360 or ps3. if one game failed you only loose a minimal amount on the wii, now if a game failed on ps3 or 360 thats a huge lost. you can argue all you want about how the wii cant do nice graphic, developer dont think this way, they go where there is less risk and more chance of making bigger profit. 360 and ps3 need to start focus on getting the mass market support instead fighting over a ninche hardcore market or it'll be too late if nintendo start having a lead over both console in market share.

Does anyone happen to know all the features Home will have in comparison to Live?

Also, Halo 3 will be big for the 360. Killzone has potential, yes, but we haven't seen anything more from it (screenshots, gameplay, previews, more cgi sequences, etc). The first Killzone ... no comment. Even with a decent userbase, Killzone didn't make waves on the PSP either, even though I heard it was very good. Is anyone expecting it to come out this year? It has to have another strong E3 or some gaming conference to restore faith, in my opinion.

Does anyone know if the 6 million users on Live are all 360 users, or is it split between the 360 and also Xbox users?

 I think Heavenly Sword will be awesome, and I look forward to LittleBigPlanet and such. I'm not sure about Home though. It looks almost like a game itself. And, it sounds like it'll be a microtransaction nickle-and-dime operation. Those who don't pay for content will have skimpy houses.

Kojima said MGS 4 is staying on PS3 for good, a possible spin off or something on 360 or anything else? I will not predict on that.

The PS3 will still not sell crazy even when Lair, Heavenly Sword come out but they will sell more when they do hit the market.  I don't think it's gonna start selling in really high numbers till there is a price drop and this isn't as horrible as people make it to be, if in the long run (a year from now or 2) PS3 hits the price where people will pick it up then it will start selling very well. The 360 is far from being too far ahead to catch up to for the PS3 even if this situation continues till these holidays or to 08.

About the elite sellouts, how many of them were put on the market anyway? The black elite is supposed to be a limtied edition so I don't think that many were there to be bought in the first place...

If things continue as they are now I still see PS3 being in second place after the Wii and ahead of the 360 worldwide, in the US is still unclear between the two consoles in the long run.

 Killzone better than Halo? I highly doubt that also almost impossible for it to be better selling. I don't care how long they worked on the game and all, Halo is already considered the best console FPS ever and they just have to make improvements on it, while Killzone has to actually be good in the first place.

That game is literally the least appealing Sony game coming out this year to me. Also, we shouldn't judge games just based on sales, I mean great games don't sell sometimes (Okami, amazing game) and Motorstorm is such a situation.

I think there will be a price cut before the holiday season and I do think the 80 GB is gonna take the place of the 60 as you said, there is no way in hell that it's gonna be more expensive than 600$ that is just stupid.

Many good points. I know the Elite is not a limited edition, but I don't think it was mass-produced this month. I think it will be a permanent SKU, but they are trying to gauge the sell-thru of the console. My guess would be they might've produced 100,000 for it's initial release.

Sony still is a big name in the video game world, so I do believe once the consumer price starts dropping, the sales will pick up. I want to see next gen offerings of Team ICO and GoW so bad. Shadow of the Colossus is one of my favorite games, and I am about to play through GoW2 soon. And I think it was big news when the 360 lost 3 exclusives recently.

I think that MS had a clear shot to blow sony out, but they totally screwed it up with the elite. For a gamer that is new to all this and happens to compare specs. They will clearly realise that the PS3 is a steal, with BlueRay, upgradable harddrive, wifi connection, free online play etc. MS was in a good position, as being slightly more expensive then the Wii but being able to produce games as good as the PS3, now what does it do.. it releases the "elite" that is not so "elite" if you think about it...