The PS3 sold more WW last year too, so it's been doing it for a long time. That has very little bering on the 360 if sales keep going up (and they have).

nevermind..

Ajax: you're misinterpreting what Sony said. They said that the PS3 will have a 10 year life span, just like the PSX and PS2. They never implied that they wouldn't replace the PS3 after 6 years, and I can tell you that Sony fully intends to replace the PS3 when it is about six years old. They're not going to wait a decade to release a new console.

Saying that MS is in worse shape this generation because they're going to come in third place instead of second misses reality, and cherry-picks one nearly-irrelevent fact.

Microsoft's immediate goal is to generate  a profit with their Xbox division.  If they can do it by dominating the market, that's fine.  If they can do it in third place, that's fine.  They're closer to actual profitabiliy (year-to-year, not overall) with the 360 than they ever were with the Xbox. 

The 360 is in trouble if MS simply sits on the situation and does continue to try and improve sales. I doubt this will happen.

Trying to predict future sales of a product by looking at a 2-3 month window of sales is fraught with peril.

Now, if the PS3 and Wii were already established and the 360 had just been out 1 year, then I would really worry that the platform wasn't viable for the long haul. That, however, isn't the situation. My guess is that the buying habits are affected by the length of time and season in ways that make it difficult to understand where things are ultimately headed.

 Metal Gear Solid 3 never reached 4 million, and Gears will easily reach Metal Gears Solid 2's 5.56 million by the end of its lifetime.  Take into account the fact that the PS3 userbase is much smaller than the PS2 userbase and there is no way MGS4 sill move more software.  Sure, it may push some hardware for Sony, but its software sales are in decline, and it will be selling to a smaller market no less. 

 Ail said:

"Things is the PS3 has been outselling the 360 and steadily increasing the amount by which it outsells it WITHOUT any exclusive AAA out. That's when you realize how bad things are becoming for Microsoft...."

GT5:P begs to differ.  Only since its release have PS3 sales seen this massive jump - they are close to 2x what they were in Others,  but before the average difference was around 30,000 units.

yea that's what I thought too when I just read some articles again BigJ
hmm..

 Here's where I disagree.  I don't think the "public" gives a rat's ass about how many consoles Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, etc... sell.  If they think that they will be able to play good games for reasonable prices they will buy the next xbox, or next playstation, or whatever.

Microsoft was never going to jump into the market and claim the top spot. Nintendo could do it because it had NO competition. Sony could do it because Sega collapsed. But MS was rushing into a field with two strong, established competitors, and knew it would be a long, hard slog to simply gain credibility.

By beating Nintendo last gen, MS showed it deserves to be in this business.

This generation it will outcompete Sony in the world's largest market, it will have established itself as a "must have" console for "hard core" gamers, it will have substantially improved upon XBox sales, and for the first time will start to show a profit in this business. These are not small accomplishments.

If we pretend that this year's sales hold for a considerable period (I'm not convinced they will, but since that seemed to be the postulate in the OP, let's run with it). Let's look at the chart:

http://vgchartz.com/hwcomps.php?cons1=PS3&reg1=All&cons2=PS3&reg2=All&cons3=X360&reg3=All&start=39446&end=39544&weekly=1

50,000 a week may sound big, but in context of 20+ million consoles, the differential is barely noticable. At the start of the year, it was 16.1m vs 8.8m. Now it's 18.1m vs 11.6m. That's narrowed the gap by one million in 3 months. So by year's end, at that pace, Sony will be still be behind by 4 million or so. It will take another year for Sony to have a chance to catch up, and even then the 360 will retain a sizable lead in the US. And it is very likely that, as the end of 2009 draws near, any Sony announcement of "we finally caught up!" will be drowned out by Microsoft's announcement of a new console for 2010 or 2011. Given just how big the gap was between the two last generation, I don't see how this can be seen as a phail for MS.

Most important to this is Nintendo. They have shown with the Wii that it is possible to dramatically leap over your competition - if you have the right product. MS will have a chance to get a big jump on the next Sony machine. If they design it right, learn how to combine the core and casual appeal in a moderately priced machine, I think they have a very good chance to make an even better showing next generation.

The Gamecube  is a close third is your listed stats.  I see that's the best the 360 can do (unless MS does something phenomenal we haven't heard of).

Beating the XBOX1 sales is nice, but I never heard that as being MS' goal: I recall "first to ten million dominates".  Beating XBOX1 sales but staying in third place isn't dominating. I cannot believe (on launch) MS ever expected they would be third place in current sales in '08.  If that's what they really expected, that's not what they said.

At this point, I think fans would like to hear MS' prognosis of the way things are and their future plans (E3?).

Xbox360 is not just in trouble, in serious trouble!!

1 year ago, it had the best games, now that Wii is catching up, it's sales are dropping
also, it had a price higher than Wii, now that the price is even lower than Wii, and Ps3 is still outselling Xbox360.....