By that logic, these Americans should be on the move to the PS3. I am not sure what it is that has given the 360 its success here, but I can deffinitly see that theres a much higher count of MS fanboys than last gen.

What shooter does the Playstation currently have on the market that rival Halo 3 and Gears of War 2 again?

I highly doubt it's "The Games" that your speaking of considering both consoles have "The Games". It's about image. I'd easily say Mass Effect, Lost Odyssey, and Bioshock EASILY shame Halo 3, but which one caught the image? The games that do insanely well were geared to do so. I don't like Microsoft as a company, but they know how to pull massive strings when it comes to advertising. And they know what to pimp out as well.

And like mentioned above, the year head start with word of mouth also really helps. Many people pick up consoles this day in age to play with they're friends. And with the increasing use of online play, it was an attractive console @ the PS3's launch. This day in age however, the value isn't anywhere near as amazing, and were seeing that trend in the sales market, the gap is nowhere near as extreme.

Well off the top of my head, both first and 3rd person would be Unreal Tournament 3 (which I'm not sure Halo will ever match in awesomeness), and Warhawk >_> And after playing all 4 games, I can say that with ut-most certainty. Halo is NOT that great of a game, it did NOT sell based on quality, I gurantee you of that.

Again...No. The Playstation 3 doesn't have "the games". You can argue there are better games out there than Halo and Gears (to which, I would agree), but look at it this way:

Xbox 360:

24 Million Sellers

9, 2 Million Sellers

4, 3 Million Sellers

2, 4 Milion Sellers

1, 5 Million Seller

Playstation 3

7 Million Sellers

Do you notice the difference? The Xbox 360, regardless of the reasoning has had the better selling games. And if people buy a console for games, then clearly the Playstation 3 is not the system that has popular games. The Xbox 360 has more 2-million+ sellers than the PS3 has of 1 million sellers. Look at any market - Japan, EU, PAL, and you can usually rank any system in terms of overall hardware sales by how many games they move. And guess what? The Xbox 360 clearly moves more games. It has struck a chord with US gamers due to the huge library of action and sports titles, with multiplayer focus. Remember, we're the country that bought nearly 6 million copies of Goldeneye on a system that was largely ignored by the rest of the world.

X360 has had a year's start on the PS3.

americans like the shooters

It's pretty simple, actually. Until recently, one could walk into their local gamestop or gaming aisle and see a wall full of 360 titles, both new and used with lots of budget titles (and some decent ones at that) to pick up and play. At the same time, the PS3 area was more of a "nook" than a wall. Clearly things have begun to improve lately and the PS3 has more appeal but it's as simple as games. There are a LOT more titles on the 360 to choose from and people, I think, overestimate the value that Joe Six Pack places on the blu-ray player. Sure, it's nice to have, but when Joe goes to buy his KID a console, the KID wants to play games on it, not watch movies. Sony's fortunes are most certainly improving as the game library continues to expand, but that should answer your question.

I'm not sure if you've noticed the trend that a games quality has little bearing on a games success. You have to market, reviews can only carry something so far.

Games like...
Bioshock,
Mass Effect,
Ninja Gaiden 2
Unreal Tournament 3
Lost Odyssey
Burnout Paradise... etc etc etc. All together probably haven't sold what Halo 3 has.

Having the most "AAA" titles doesn't mean anything. Why is the PS3 outselling the 360 on a regular basis if this wasn't true? Why does the 360 only really "perform" outstandingly in America? Microsoft sure as hell knows why.

The arguement that anything could be "based off the games" is absurd. You and I both know that whatever console you pick, you'll have more good games to choose from than you would care to pay for. This is what I meant by "Both Consoles have the games". Only fanboy blinders would prevent a PS3 owner from saying the 360's got no games, AND vice versa.

Let's try this and it settles the "where are the games" question for now:

http://www.gamersworldbd.com/2008/07/xbox-360-has-best-games.html

snippet from the article:

...how true is his words declaring “You go onto Metacritic - and count the number of 90-rated titles on our platform, compare that to Wii, compare that to PlayStation 3: there is no comparison”?

We did just that. Jumped straight into Metacritic and did some simple statisitcs. Believe it or not, his statement actually holds out to be true (it’s not a matter of Halo vs Gears vs Metal Gear Solid, folks). To be precise, the Xbox 360 has a total of 12 90+ rated titles. Compared to the PS3 and Wii tying together for a total of 5 each. But the 360 has the highest library of games, 427 to be exact with the Wii trailing in at 234 titles and the PS3 a 186."

Yes, I know the 360 has been out a year longer.  But 427 to 186 is a pretty wide gap regardless of how we arrived at that number.  Again, for the "average" video game player, I expect that "other" features in their consoles (netflix, blu-ray, etc.) bear little on their decisions.  It comes down to playable games.