Final-Fan said:

EXACTLY!!!  Whenever a PS2 owner buys an Xbox 360, they stop giving their money to Sony through software and START giving their money to Microsoft through software (not to mention the high likelihood Microsoft is profiting on hardware).  Furthermore, the Xbox 360's trajectory didn't "have" to go higher than the Xbox's, but the fact that it has is evidence of a victory for Microsoft.  My argument is simply that the Xbox 360 HASN't (in any respect) reached the apex (good word btw) that we are talking about.

You know what? I just thought of something: maybe you've spent so long arguing against Sony fanboys that all those PS2 owners were just waiting in the wings, chastely awaiting [INSERT GAME HERE] and coyly avoiding the overtures of the 360 -- you've spent so long being bombarded with "ZOMG they will come eventually!" -- that you've internalized it and see the fact that the 360 is getting some of those fabled masses as a huge victory that means the 360 can't possibly be heading for a downturn. One does not necessarily follow the other.

2. I find your utter failure to comprehend this point very frustrating. He was not elaborating on the line of the questioning in the OP. He was, in fact, commenting on a TANGENT brought up by someone making an argument about software. By speaking in your OP as if that comment was relevant to his OP, you twist his words. I said you "deny" him the right to talk about things not related directly to the OP e.g. SW because you insisted on acting as if everything he said in the thread was necessarily related directly to the OP. The only way he could have avoided this misrepresentation would be not to post those other thoughts at all. Do you understand what I am getting at now? Do you wish to recant that portion of the OP or would you like to defend your reasoning for including that?

See this is the thing, you haven't pointed out an instance where I have defined this thread as pertaining solely to DMeisterJ's OP.  I quite agree that DMeisterJ was responding to what he apparently (I say apparently because he didn't specify that the thread was about HW until AFTER SW came up) saw as a tangent.  But he did respond nonetheless and as such his comments are included in this thread, which is a broad response to his thread as a whole.  I understand what you are getting at, it just seems that your determined to believe that this thread was always solely grounded in a response to DMeisterJ's OP, which it wasn't.

3. Are you now saying that the main argument in the OP was simply that much of the PS2's userbase is going to consoles other than the PS3, and that a substantial amount of that is going to the 360? I think you would be hard-pressed to dredge up more than one or two members here that would disagree with that statement. I think you would even have a hard time finding people to argue that GTAIV does not highlight those facts.

As I said in an earlier post, any conversation about the Xbox 360's competitiveness is inherently going to involve a discussion about the PS3's competitiveness, which this thread only proves.  However as the third paragraph of my OP clearly states, this thread is abotu Sony losing consumers and Microsoft gaining them.  I then went on to clarify that I did indeed mean losing consumers through loses to the PS2 userbase, and gaining them through the Xbox 360 respectively. 

I think the problem we have here is that you think I am saying more with this thread than I actually am.  I was pointing out what is obvious to you and me, but as evidenced by the length of this thread, isn't obvious to many people.  You have simply assumed that I am insinuating something I am not. 

As for your stated topic of this thread, I can see that somewhat in the OP. But in that case, why did you choose to put your argument in the framework of a response to a post that was not only specifically about the 360 but limiting itself to HW sales as well? Surely you understand how people would naturally think that your goal was to discuss the 360, or 360/PS3, instead of Sony and MS generally.

As I said, this thread was never a response to a specific post, but a response to a specific poster's posts in a specific thread.  I also specified that others were involved in purpetuating the same viewpoint.