The 360's still competing in the UK, which is closer to the american games market.

The PS3 could still come back in japan as its library expands, and hardware prices come down.

"Microsoft stuffed in Europe AND Japan."

There, fixed the title for you.

the only thing Sony needs in Japan is a PS3 slim - after that it will sell well

Microsoft isn't stuffed in Japan.  I wasn't aware Microsoft were even selling the Xbox 360 in Japan? lol.

Stuffed or not, PS3 still has NO BIG BRAND hitter released in Japan.
After MGS4, FFXIII, GT5 you can try to make such topic, IF ps3 will around 10-15k. Now just the lack of GREAT btrand games + japanese games brought ps3 sales to such level.

That won`t last forever. The games will come out. :)

Another point to take into consideration is that alot of europe is very anti-america at the moment and no amount of exclusives are going to change that!

 Ahahha that made me lol

I think that the country of origin has quite marginal effect on the console sales in Europe.

Sony has three options I believe (two of which it can directly influence):

a) get more J centric and popular games - We'll see what impact GT5 and FF and MSG have, but they need more volume of local games

b) get PS3 slim to market (a'la PSP) and I believe that the loss of BC in Japan is more of an issue than in US/Others - they should consider getting it back in or (better choice now I believe) get emulation out for PS2 BC instead so that 40 GB owners can also take advantage

c) wait until Wii sales are approaching saturation and for market to pick up on PS3 (a'la PSP again). If I was then I wouldn't wait for this to happen but aggresively get going on a) and b) above...

@ MozBlue )

but europeans still buy ipods and eat at McDonalds, so that argument is void - a better point is, that Microsoft has quite a bad reputation over here