When the team in my sig got their shit together.

I had a 360 with live gold a year before the ps3. Where it went wrong for me was:
- RROD: twice within a few months, both taking over a month for repair.
- Unstable connection to live (NAT errors all the time), hard to understand people over the headset, so cancelled it as it wasn't worth the money.
- No Wi-fi in the early models, I don't have lan cable in the living room in my new house, another reason to cancel live.
- No blu-ray. I have the HD-DVD drive add-on with about 7 movies, money well spent....

I started buying multiplats for ps3 after I cancelled live. On ps3 I could still give online multiplayer a try now and then and with the built-in wifi I didn't need to do anything extra for it. Then there were fewer and fewer interesting exclusives on 360. It's been the least used console in my house for years.

PS3 simply got better than xbox did as time went.
I think games was the biggest factor...MS/xbox invested mostly in timed exclusives, Sony/PS3 invested in proper first party developed exclusives.
The 'ps3 has no games' didnt really matter because at the time it had no games, hardly anyone could afford one.
PS+ was the KO punch.

It really is surprising how wrong MS would have to go to lose against a machine where third party devs were not even doing 720p...Lets hope Sony doesnt go that wrong with the PS4.

Maybe I'm paranoid but is this going to be a beat up on 360/Brag on PS3 kinda thread?

First, I think, it's necessary to point out that the assumption that Microsoft would continue to build market-share in the generation after the Xbox 360 was based on nothing but wishful thinking. I can't tell you how many times over the last few years I've seen people post that the next Xbox would "win".

The truth, however, was that the PS3 had a much higher sales rate than the 360. On a monthly basis, it consistently outsold the 360. Throw out the Kinect anomaly and the numbers get even more skewed. Simply put, the Playstation brand has been the better selling brand through most of its lifetime. Microsoft did a wonderful job; they killed off the original Xbox in order to launch the 360 with a year's head start, they poured vast amounts of money into securing games and into marketing, they created an excellent online experience, and they secured Halo and Gears.

But assuming that the next Xbox would dominate? That's kind of unfair to Microsoft. Playstation was the stronger brand this past generation even with all the mistakes Sony made early on. If both companies had continued the way they left off, there really was no reason to assume that Microsoft had the console war in the bag.

So, in that regard, I don't see how Microsoft can be blamed simply because Sony got their affairs in order.

As for why Playstation has been the stronger brand, most of that goes down to World Wide Studios. It has a more diverse catalog of games, which gives it more appeal in more places. Outside a few exceptions, the 360 has had to depend on third-party titles in most genres. To Microsoft's credit, they've seemingly realized this, as they've kicked up internal development by a massive degree.

Microsoft is going to end up in last place in the 7th gen for a few reasons.

1. RROD turned off a whole lot of gamers early on.
2. The Kinect was supported for about a year and then they stopped making games for it.
3. The 1st party games for the last few years have been few and far between, and almost all of them were sequels that were no better then their predecessors.
4. Relying on COD way too much - This one has blown my mind for years. PS3 has the exact same game, yet they have treated the franchise like an exclusive, and now that COD is selling what it is on Playstations consoles, its pretty clear that people couldn't care less about which console they play it on.

Microsoft is in deep trouble this gen. COD's popularity is down. The overall response to Kinect is "meh" at best. The 1st party games are all aimed towards the same crowd that have already bought the console. The only way I see Xbox doing really well this gen is if they lay off the really mature games and start making more fun games that are aimed at a wider audience. Otherwise its going to be the home console Vita. Sell a bunch to start, keep pumping out games aimed at the same audience, console sales go down the tubes.

I will say this. For a console that "went wrong", it sold 80 million consoles (with virtually no help from Japan) and it's STILL getting support from first and third parties as it goes into its NINTH year on the market. The only thing it did wrong was sell less than its competition. Wii overtook it in a short amount of time due to its phenomenal first several years and PS3 over the course of several years.

And people were saying "You see how they did with Xbox? They only supported it for four years. That's how the 360 will be." Boy, were they wrong. Instead of focusing on what the 360 did wrong, I like to think of what the 360 did right. I went from not wanting anything Xbox to having the 360 become my favorite console. That's a hell of an accomplishment to me.

First-party support? I guessed MS dropped the ball years ago... no support in the last two years.

i dont think they went wrong BUt RROD sure as hell didnt help, hell it was the main thing that kept me from buying a 360 and by the time it was fixed their wasnt any exclusives that i wanted that would have justified another console for me.

worldwide, the world is just not as enomared by 360 as the US is, they really dont give a crap about it in Japan

Wii...it came out of nowhere.

as a Sony fan i was hoping it would NOT go that way but it appears to be doing so.