To address your points.

Batteries: What parent doesn't have a recharger and batteries at home? Its pretty standard fare when everything takes them nowadays. Furthermore this play n charge kit costs as much as an HDMI cable, so its a wash.

Storage: The Xbox360 uses a firmware to upgrade itself, it doesn't rely on the HDD at all and you can also save your games on the internal memory card, As for the importance of it, I don't know I never bothered to update.

Wireless: The cheapest I have heard is $25 for a D-link adapter and the cheapest I have seen is $45 for a wireless adapter and as an added bonus it offers superior performance to the PS3 wireless so you can actually stream movies etc over it. I have a PS3 and I've tried/Failed.

HDMI: All Xbox360s come with an HDMI port.

Reliability: HDDs have a failure rate thats higher than your given figure. Since all PS3s have a HDD, the failure rate is obviously higher than 1%. To further this point, My PS3 has broken twice - obviously an anecdote and both times out of warranty. Your figures of 25-35% are way overblown besides anything else. The Falcon Xbox360s had decent reliability and the Jaspers are going to be even better. Furthermore the Xbox360 Jasper is probably a "safer" bet than a PS3 due to the 3 year electrical warranty.

Shipment numbers: Vgchartz only tracks retail sales, and if you've stumbled across some huge discrepency please let IOI know.

Live: Xbox live costs $40 per year from Newegg or $3.33 a month and they even offer pretty good parental controls, as a parent you should apreciate that. Or you can pay $50 or $4.16 per month. As an added bonus you can stream 12,000 titles last time I checked from Netflix.

Lastly, my sources are more up to date than yours, check out the Neogaf thread and notice that the numbers of Falcon Xbox360s with issues are in sharp decline next to the older generation of Xbox360s. Furthermore for the older generations Microsoft has developed a new Motherboard design to prevent them from enduring recurring problems in the future.

Don't forget to add in the cost of buying all the amazing games on the xbox 360, oppose to the few the ps3 has.  What is it? 14 AAA +90% games now for the xbox, compared to only 5 on the PS3, so that's a 9 game difference x $50 a game = $450. 

 Wow the 360 costs almost $1500 now!

 LOL! Comment of the week...

Another prediction thread? These are getting old...

Sony have three system sellers in the near (ish) future. KillZone of which i think there are more people out there looking forward to this than let on. LBP but this may not turn out to be so big, may turn out to be Huge. No way to tell yet. Plus God of War which is still a little to far off. Of course there is GT but until damage is incorporated into the game its stock will continue to fall. As for the Question? No i think the 360 will take the next couple of weeks then it will all level out and the weekly placing of second will flip flop between the two

Normally I wouldn't do this, but you asked for it.

To be a dad, you are *rather* misinformed about a ton of things in this *press release* off SDF's media site. Please tell me you do *basic* research before you buy your child a game. Otherwise, he/she will be asking for Playboy Mansion and you will BUY IT.

The xbox won three straight weeks. SO WHAT!!! The PS3 beat it the previous 7-1/2 months.

Actually, how many months was the PS3 behind the 360? Maybe I'm mistaken - I thought Sonydomination had started. How could the almighty PS3 lose ANY WEEKS to the 360 again? It beat the 360 for 7.5 months. How long was the 360 out front? And yes, it beat the 360 for those months - but how far has it progressed? Look at the 360 lead when the PS3 launched. Now, look at how far it is. For a console that is supposed to be the second coming, that is right at pathetic.

You actually think that a $199 Arcade will make any difference.

Check your sources. The $199 price point is the sweet spot for gaming. MS will sell these like hotcakes in the U.S. And that's all that matters to them. They are making much, much more loot with their U.S. sales than the rest of the world. Guess what - MS could literally tank in the rest of the world but pull out the win in the U.S. with the $199 price point. Why? Most folks want to get something awesome for little money. At $199, they get that with an Arcade 360. They can get a current gen HD console, they can play current releases and they have a choice if they want a HD, they can choose if they wanna play online - or not. They have a choice if they want to go wireless or not, they can choose if they want to download videos, games or not. For some folks, firing up their system and playing a game is all that matters.

The arcade version is worthless. You can't play on line, you can't update the the system or games and you can't even save game progress.

Quit visiting SDF, take your head out your butt and think about what you just posted. How is it worthless? It comes with a memory card to save your games. You can play Mass Effect, Halo 3, Gears of War, Bioshock, Oblivion, Ace Combat 6, Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, Eternal Sonata, Forza 2, Test Drive Unlimited and a HOST of other games right out of the box. You can play several Xbox titles if you buy a 20gb HD for like $40/50 on eBay. But the 360 titles, you can play the first titles I listed RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX. Yes, you can play online - it has arcade titles and if you have a broadband connection and a cable, you too can get online. Yes, you can update the 360. And yes, you can save game progress with your trusty memory card that COMES WITH THE ARCADE 360.

People are realising the xbox is a rushed, cheaply made, stripped down version of the PS3.

O'RLY? No, the 360 doesn't have an HD DVD drive built in - but that alone drove up costs and delays for the PS3. And for some gamers, cost is a huge hurdle. Let me think - pay rent or get a PS3. I'll pay rent. And rushed helped the 360 beat the PS3 to the market and has helped it secure tons o exclusives. They learned last gen that coming late to the table is a no-no if you wanna even think about winning.

You can buy any xbox and to get it to do what the PS3 does off the shelf, you have to spend more than what the PS3 costs.

Tsk, tsk. How old are you again? Why in the hell do I want an HD media player, Blu Ray, and have to buy more movies for higher prices ... for what? I wouldn't have bought a Blu Ray player until it hit $150. Seriously, I got Blu because I bought a PS3. I bought an HD DVD add-on for the 360 because I got a killer deal and a Best Buy giftcard.

And your other point - yawn. I don't care about wifi on my console at the moment. Gimme wired, FTW. I want to game for as cheap as possible. The other accessories on the PS3 are NOT NECESSARY for gaming. I love having a choice. I want to get into HD gaming for $199. If I wanna do it with a PS3, I better save my lunch money or knock off some 7-11s or Swifty Serves and hope they got loot in the safe. Nah, $199 will definitely get folks rabid. And you can expect a long wait until the PS3 hits that mark.

Not to mention the $10 a month you have to pay for online playing.

You say you are a parent - who is feeding you this crap? Oh ... SDF. No, it's like $4 a month with a NewEgg card and maybe - maybe $5-6 if you are billed monthly. You really need to check your facts before posting.

Over the supposed 7 year cycle that microsoft claims, that is $420 extra.

You should ask your son to help you in math or algebra.

But don't worry, your x-box 360 will have the infamous "ring of death" long before that seventh year comes.

And you are old enough to remember Sony's infamous DRE - disk read error - which still hits PS2s today! That proves games sell systems. Even with that crap hanging over Sony's head, they cruised to victory, even though the PS2 was fragile and unreliable.

I wonder how many of the X-box's 20 million is sales are replacements for ones that have died.

There's no need to comment on this troll POC.

Don't forget there are less that 13 million x-box live users, where are the remaining 7 million?

You aren't a parent. You can't be. Did you phail at reading comprehension? Tell me one thing - where o where did MS say every person who bought an Xbox 360 were on LIVE? Sure, the silver membership has a few features, but I know a few folks who have 360s and never, ever take them online. READ - your brain is a terrible thing to waste.

My prediction is the PS3 will pass the x-box by the middle of 2009.

Oh, I can't wait to see this. At the current rate with PS3domination on hold, it will be when the 360 leaves the market in 2nd place. The PS3 will pass the 360 after MS releases the 720 and no one will care anyhow. That's like saying 'The Virtual Boy rocks!' Who in the HELL cares?

After that microsoft will abandon the console industry. They have lost billions on the 360 and there is no end in sight.

Sheez. You are telling fibs. Why would MS leave the console biz? How many exclusives have they lost this gen? How many have they gained? And lastly, who has the 2nd place lead with millions and millions of consoles right now? And to think - they are making loot and can drop the Arcade to $200 AND STILL LEAD the PS3. It's funny - MS can drop it like it's hot and still make loot - if Sony does it, they will be bleeding like a heart patient.

Man, my professional recommendation is to quit your PS3 for a while, read to your child and take some refresher courses at your local library or community college in Engrish. And unbookmark SDF.

Muchas gracias (that's 'much thanks' in Spanish).

Have you took a look lately at which site your posting serious that was just a stupid comment.

Why do people make predictions like these? they almost always come back to smack the poster square in the face regardless of what console they are touting. My guess is 360 will win 5 out of the next 8, Maybe 6, and maybe as little as 4. This all really depends on Sony's supply situation over the next 2 months. The permanent price cut will have little impact in my estimation. MS is getting their big price cut kick now. The arcade is worthless to most people so it will have little effect. I figure by the time the permanent cut hits the sales will actually just be settling down from the original. I suspect by then if Sony gets supply straight that the PS3 will be doing 50-60k in the US a week, and the 360 60-70k Truly the 360 needs to find a way to outsell the PS3 in the US by 50k a week, and I just don't see that happening on a regular normal basis. As long as Sony is supply riddled they can and have.

the 360 will outsell the ps3 for the rest of the year easily...with games like GOW2, Fable 2. the SE games, and the price drop it. The ps3 has a handful of weak games at best (just look at E3).