You really believe there is a significant number of gamers out there that would be convinced to buy a 360 by Gears 2 but they weren't by Gears 1, Halo 3, Bioshock ?

Difference between Vice City and GTA3 is the genre wasn't beaten to death on the PS2 between the release of the 2 games...There's at least a couple shooters coming to the 360 every year, at this point it's going to be hard to expand the 360 demand based on those games...

Besides I hate to steal one argument of the PS3 haters but here it is.

The 360 has a very good game library( more games than most people can buy), the PS3 not so. So the PS3 has a much easier job attracting buyers with new games.

You're twisting my argument. I said that Gears wouldn't move as many consoles as MGS. The shooter segment of the 360 is pretty saturated.

But in a holiday season with another price drop, a November Gears of War 2 will move consoles. There are a lot of other factors than just the game itself. Time of year, marketing, price at release, etc. will all factor in for Gears.

Um, I keep reading how the PS3 is now going to pass the 360 by next year, next christmas, and so on or the 360 is dead, over the hill, or beginning its decline, and so on.  This post is just a small dose of reality-injection.  It's not manufactured "bad news" but a simple statement about the reality of the current situation.  Perhaps you could tell me what the "manufactured bad news" is?  If I were manufacturing bad news, I would have come in and posted, say, "Hey, the Lair analog patch is out and the reviewers still say it sucks!".  But I didn't do that, no did I?

This thread and the one about "will the 360 reach 50 million" illustrates the point precisely.  People don't think when they throw out these wild projections.

And, if you don't like the thread, title, or anything else, why did you come here and post?  The best thing to do is just ignore it and hope it drops off the hot-topics list.  Shame on you for annointing yourself the post-police and feeling as if you are the greater moral good to lecture others on posting.  Perhaps you should pause for a moment before you hit that "post" button in the future.

Problem is you ignored a lot of factors in your analysis like holydays for example.

In terms of sales holydays are like adding a quarter or an extra 14 weeks to a year. Take those into account and already the date you mention has shifted.

Personally I believe the PS3 will overtake the 360 sometime in 2009, most likely Fall or Holydays 2009.

Besides you have to consider more than the current sales but the pattern for the generation.

So far for the 360 we have year 3>year 2>year 1.

However in year 3 there starts to be a few countries where 360 sales are bellow year 2 sales ( Japan, and France so far).

 PS3 is doing year 2> year 1 and it's a fair assumption if it follows the 360 pattern that year 3 will be above year 2 ( market sure isn't saturated in any segment anywhere).

It's going to depend a lot on wether the 360 can sell more in 2009 than in 2008 or will in fact sell less...

 I'm afraid I'm not following you.  First you imply that the holiday period is like an extra 14 weeks in the year.  If I take those into account then the 800K sales differential between the PS3 and the 360 over the 4 month period (Dec 1- End March) is now an "effective" 4 months plus 14 more weeks -- call it 3 months -- for a total of 7 months of "effective" time (because of the big sales over the holiday) then we would be looking at 800K/7 months or about 115K/month.  That would push the catch up timeline WAY out -- to the end of the generation or beyond...   Personally I don't agree as there is a holiday every year and both will increase or decrease proportionately.  Of course a bigger sample size is warrented, but this is all the historical data we have and for it not to apply one has to assume radical changes are ahead.  While there will be changes, they will tend to smooth each other out to some degree.

But.... then you go on and say you believe the PS3 will overtake the 360 in the Fall or Holidays of next year.  That's the opposite of what you are implying above...  That's your opinion, but what do you base it on?  To get there from here, 6.45 million MORE PS3s have to be sold that 360s.  Let's say May is our start month... May through End November for example... 19 months...  6.45/19... Roughly 340K consoles per month on average from here on out...  Do you really think there is going to be a sudden acceleration of PS3s in the very near term? (or conversely a sever decrease in 360s sold?)  What is the basis of your belief? 

Only problem is Halo 3 was not the poster child. We knew Halo 3 was going to be made/was being made, but MS did not show Halo 3 until when? First thing I remember was the teaser trailer.

Also need to add that Halo is a far more popular title than MGS.  Console install base will be similiar (Halo 3 hit with about 11.5 million 360's sold to consumers and PS3 will be around 12.5 million sold when MGS4 hits).  Some seem to indicate that MGS4 will sell a new PS3 along side each copy.  Some seem to indicate that GT5 will also sell to 100% new PS3 owners and the same for FFXIII.  I think that once those hit a great deal of the consumers for the titles will be existing PS3 owners. Is it safe to say that those 2 titles will have 25% attach rate to existing PS3 owners. I think that the number is low. If they do then that will be about 4 million copies sold. FFXII sold 5 million total. 

Really the further we get into the generation the real thing that will keep the consoles selling is library.  360 is going to keep up with PS3 library wise and probably stay ahead.  This in itself will keep the sales close enough so that the PS3 doesnt catch up until the next gen is upon us and by then it wont matter.

In fact, I was wrong about my Xmas 2009 prediction ... September seems more possible to me ...Yes definitely.

(I dont expected the PS3 to top the Xbox360 in NA so early (I was late by 12 month !!))

The PS3 didn't really sell more than the 360 in Holydays 2007.( some weeks it did, some it didn't there wasn't a trend).

The trend where it started to heavilly oversell it started in 2008 that is my belief, and for the last 3 months that trend has been steady with the PS3 selling 50k more units than the 360 every week, that wasn't the case during the holydays period.

So if you start in May you have roughly 50 weeks left in the year if you count the holydays double.

Which would mean that by January 2009 the PS3 would be around 3.7-3.9 millions units behind the 360.

I believe if sales follow the traditional pattern PS3 sales will be higher in 2009 ( I don't think it's a wrong assumption, lets not forget it's top market is Others and it wil have been out less than 2 years there by that date), how much higher I can't say.

On the other hand I believe 360 sales in 2009 will be the same as in 2008. Sales will be dead in Japan but that hardly matters, sales will be down slighlty in Others compard to 2008 and sales might be the same or slightly up in NA.

Even if the sales pattern stayed roughly the same the PS3 would have reduced the gap by 3 millions in 2008 and I don't see it a stretch for it do to the remaining 3.9 millions or so in 2009....

I think the bottom line is the PS3 is seeing YoY sales increase greater than the 360 so it will catch up with it...( the PS3 second year looks like it's totally going to destroy the 360 second year).

 Are you being stupid on purpose?