Both consoles are now fairly mature at reasonable prices. Even though I believe that the precedent is already set, I believe that for whoever wins this holiday season, it will set the tone for the rest of the generation more than ever. If Sony wins by a  landslide, then it will probably keep getting better for them, however, if its a close dog fight, it will also probably remain that way also. This holiday, their is NO excuses any more. Great games are available for all systems, shortages should be taken care of, and enough advertising is in place. This could be the most cruicial holiday season of making or breaking a systems life. Sony CANNOt even dream of a 10 year life cycle if they dont get considerable market advantage in sales this holiday.

hmm i disagree, only stupid people would buy a ps3 now instead of waiting for the price cut.

Shortages are not taken care of. I have not seen a ps3 in my area for a long time and i've seen some people saying the same.

though both consoles are over one year, neither is mature, next year should be the dawn of ms mature cycle, and i do not belive we will see sonys untill 2010 ... four years in... well three really.

outside of that sony themselves do not feel this. last year was cucial to build a base so we saw price cuts.. next year will be the big year for sony... they a have to maintain profitablity while takeing a price cut. i feel ms will take one this fall or right after christmas..

right now ms if they wanted to could really hurt sony by forcing a price drop, but they seem to have other plans

@masterb8tr where do you live that there is a shortage. it the last 6 months all consoles have been available if one looked more than one store, all three have had the occasional week they are out but even good supply chain cant fix that. the ps3 has been easy to find since launch there are many 80 gig available (backwards compate). most 360 models pro seems to have had a hicup a few weeks back or just bad channeling in this area, and the wii well nintendo is either completely incompetent and not able to adjust to demand, or they like to create press and artafical demand by lowering output and making it seem rare.... the latter is far more probable as stores seem to be using this too... leaving only one out and keeping the rest back in lockup, or denying that they have them when they are in lock up (seems to be a big practice at best buy, kmart, and some gamepots)

Well usually if a system cannot get out of second or third place after a lOOONg time, they never do. Look at the past systems like the N64, Saturn, Dreamcast, Game Cube, etc. No matter how many good games come out on it

I agree that this holiday season is extremely important. But then again, aren't all holiday seaons important? I mean, it's the biggest sales of the year. For Sony, while they need to win this holiday season (hell, all holiday season), they still have bullets left for upcoming years to come. I mean, it was only less than 2 months ago when they got their first real system seller (MGS4). They started real slow this generation, so hopefully they can pick it up.

Its pretty much uncontested at this point that the Wii will be in first place for the forseeable future. Now the fight between MS and Sony will be a better thing to watch, but without a permanent price drop on the 360 or the PS3 I wouldn't expect things to change that much, i.e. Sony slightly to greatly edging out the 360 each week.