That's just your opinion though. I could easily also just say,

"I could be wrong but I don't see a system seller on PS4 until Uncharted in November".

Eh, I think Microsoft has a solid chance of taking back the U.S., at least compared to its far, far slimmer odds in most of the other markets, but I think that assuming such a comeback is an Inevitable-Can't-Be-Stopped thing is going a bit far. o.O Given the Xbox One regained a fair bit of ground during the holiday season, but got its butt pretty consistently kicked for the entire non-holiday period, the odds of them winning the country overall boils down to how each subsequent year plays out. If either the PS4 maintains or improves upon the Year One pattern, (building up momentum during the first ten months to offset the last two,) then they win overall, even if Microsoft proves to be King of the Holidays every year.

The Xbox One winning by the end of gen requires either them winning more months, or greatly increasing the gap by which they win their holiday months. Personally, I think they have a good shot, so long as their price is always lower than the PS4's to draw in more fence-sitters with no strong preference that lean more towards general multiplat fun.

Anywho, January NPD should be a good measuring stick; if the Xbox One can maintain the ratio of their December gap that month, then they're in a good spot for subsequent months. If the gap has narrowed, or closed, or swung back in the PS4's favor on the other hand, they might find the overall gap widening again until the next major Xbox One release.

When is the next major Xbox One exclusive release, anyway? Last time I checked a list, there was Screamride in March, (although not sure how 'major' it's going to be,) aaaand... not really sure if anything else has a solid release date. Someone enlighten meeee! D:

If Sony drops the price to keep parity I do not see them losing. If not then things could go either way.

Yowapeda?

well if they keep giving their consoles away, sure it will beat the PS4 eventually.

Officially (as in, by the manufacturer and not store specific), the XBOne has

1) Bundled games for free, pretty much since launch (starting with Forza)

2) Removed Kinect to reduce the entry price point

3) Reduced the price even further as a "promotion" to get people to think "better hurry and buy one before the price goes back up" in the biggest spending period of the year as a marketing ploy to utterly maximize sale, then turned around and said "sike! It wasn't only for the holiday period. The promotion has 'no end date' (aka an official price cut)" And you can play semantics all you want, but it was only "back" to $400 for like 8 days.

Not to mention what happened unofficially, like back in March when Walmart reduced the price to $450 probably to get rid of the extra stock (back when Greenberg lied and said the "reporting can be confusing, but we sold 3.9M as of January", when they actually shipped 3.9M and sold 3M, leaving nearly 1M on shelves). Then there was a price match extravaganza where pretty much every major retailer dropped to $450 to compete (seeing how Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the world). And then, the price was dropped (unofficially) another time for BF to $329 at many retailers (plus monetary incentives as well, like $50 gift cards).

All this and what has Sony done with the PS4? The BF bundle? And XBOne still isn't ahead.

Long story short, I'll take this bet. We already know the XBOne can't compete at price parity and depending on how NPD goes, it may not even be able to compete at price inequality, now that people aren't being duped into thinking the price will go up soon so they better "get it while it's cheap" (VGC has PS4 up, marginally. While Amazon has PS4 on top (and has been correct for every month)).

In what dimensions does all this spell a victory for XBOne in the US?

Accept.

Is that why the 360 caught the Wii in the US?

I wouldn't call Screamride major, as it's a $40 "AA" game in the category of Zoo Tycoon. I doubt anyone will be enticed to buy a console for those games.

The first (and only) major exclusive coming out in 2015 that is announced so far is Halo 5. Probably with Quantum Break before it, but the experience with Remedy says that the launch window is anywhere between September and 2017. They also have a timed exclusive Tomb Raider, which will shift a few consoles, but much much less than if it were fully exclusive.

Thats funny because Don Mattrick doesnt work for Xbox anymore..

Also PS4 probably cant afford a price drop. Considering its higher GPU and Ram units, its a more expensive system to make which will mean the X1 will always have the cheaper price point (Not including Kinect obviously)