I never mentioned a gap at all, did I? No, I'm not expecting anything right now.

The only things we can settle with all likelihood at this point (in my opinion), are these;

1: The xbox will probably remain the strongest in North America for the 8th gen

2: The One will probably have a really good first week in in North America and some parts of Europe, so the difference initially shouldn't be massive

The facts so far are;

1: The PS4 did extremely well at release in North America

2: That fact means that Europe will be getting a smaller shipment than they could probably sell off, seeing as how we know Sony are poised to produce about 5 million units until the fiscal year ends

3: Japan will be lost to the xbox, that's a given

Too soon to conclude anything for now, but the way it appears right now, the One needs some serious muscle to beat the PS4 out of the gate. The higher price point and staggered launch won't help either. Given, the PS4 also has a staggered launch but it excludes Japan for now while the One has large chunks of Europe and other areas that will go without One's on the shelves for 2013.

PS: I still maintain that the 8th gen will be smaller than 7th gen, both in software and hardware sales on handhelds and home consoles.

Either I don't undestand something (which is possible) or you contradict yourself. From what I understood from your initial post is that you don't expect the marketshare in NA to significantly change, I may have worded myself differently, should have asked about marketshare instead of saying units sold gap, but you seemed to think that Xbone will have around 15% marketshare lead over PS4, I still feel like this is very debatable, and in my opinion the marketshare between PS4 and X1 will change significantly (of course it's not a precise term)in NA, in relation to 7th .

As for the rest of your post I mostly agree, with this analysis going by the things we know at the moment.

Yeah, I don't expect the marketshares in NA to change drastically, with the exception of Nintendo. Even with the PS4 up to a superb start, I think NA is just too strong a territory for the xbox brand.
I think it will be equally difficult for Sony to dominate in NA as it would be for MS to dominate in Europe.

Hmm interesting, we'll see how it will turn out and who was closer to being right

I'll prove you wrong with that claim, using some very simple math. But before this, just remember that PS2 sold a lot more than Xbox in US despite the so called Xbox image. So this "image" of Xbox is not THAT strong as you imagine.

Now let's crunch the numbers right from this site, VGChartz...

You'll see that X360 sold 44.9 mil consoles in Us versus PS3 selling only 27.4 mil. But we need to adjust for a few things here. First 360 was in the market longer compared to PS3, 8 vs 7 years; so the average annual sales is a more meaningful comparison, especially considering that XB1 doesn't have a one year headstart this time.

This brings the average sales to 5.61 vs 3.91. But there is also the "price gap", which America always proves to be very sensitive to (which is also the main reason why 360 won the last gen). The price gap was usually around 25%, so I will just give the PS3 average sales a 25% boost, creating a scenario where PS3 matched 360's price. But at the same time, I will assume the market size is constant, so the overall sales will not change (9.53).

The 25% boost to PS3 due to lower price increases its average sales increase from 3.91 to 4.89, stealing sales from X360 whose sales decrease from 5.61 to 4.63 annually. Finally 8 years of X360 will yield total sales of 37 million vs 34 million for PS3 in 7 years, reaching at a 52%-48% equilibrium.

All this ignores the "network effects & externalities", which worked against PS3 last gen, but would actually work in favor of PS3, had its price been lower.

* Note :
The lower average HD console price is likely to steal sales from Wii as well, but this is much more likely to work in favor of PS3 since the additional HD consumers already knew the X360's price.

In short, the only reasons Xbox dominated in US are

a) It was launched early, which created network effects and positive externatilities

b) It was cheaper all along

None of which exists today. On the contrary, it is suffering from bad press, underwhelming perfomance, and HIGH PRICE.

So much for the Xbox Brand!

I believe if the X1 does sell well then there's still no winning. People are just going to call it the new COD or Justin Bieber. If it doesn't then people will call it shitty.

Good analysis. You could be wrong, but you have some solid arguments. You should add sales estimatives in units too, I think it would make your analysis more interesting.

I'd like to elaborate on my estimate above, proving that Xbox One cannot dominate this gen, which was due to the head start & price advantage, rather than the Xbox Brand.

Sometimes, the reality is very easy to see, to those who want to see it.

Below is breakdown of the pricing mechanisms and their influence on the annual sales of 360 and PS3. In summary, 

- 360 was 33% cheaper than PS3 and sold 30% more annually, with almost one to one relationship.

- This time around XB1 is 20% more expensive and you can easily predict around 20% lower demand for XB1, just because of the price.This means, there is no way that the XB1 can sell more than PS3.

If we apply "this upcoming generations pricing mechanism" to the 360-PS3 generation, you'd end up with the following values...

which would result in 34.6 million consoles sold for X360 in 8 years, and 36.4 million consoles sold for PS4 in 7 years; reaching an overall market share of 49%-51%, slightly in favor of PS3.

Note that the estimate parity between this table and the one above is the given assumptions regarding the price. I apply the PS4-XB1 pricing mechanism here whereas I assume price parity in the previous estimate. Both of which take into account the one-year headstart by X360. Without it, as in this gen, the market share will work more in favor of PS4, as I have been estimating since the OP.

Recent IGN seems to agree with my original predictions:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/11/20/which-next-gen-consoles-and-games-are-ign-readers-buying

unless something crucial occurs? Two crucial things happened:

- PS4 was not released one year late (360 had a one year and 8 million sale head start)

- The price differential change from +33% to -20% in playstation's favor. This alone will up the relative PS sales at least by 50%, and decrease the Xbox sales by 33%. I'd say do the math, but the math is up above, already done.