It is laughable to use sequels as a down scenario for the 360 and to think all the best games are already out when:

- All the top publishers and developers worldwide are fully supporting 360 game development this generation

- Microsoft Games Studios is growing exponentially with more from Halo / Gears / Fable / Mass Effect etc. etc. etc. to come (and of course new IP and unannounced games)

- Looking at the 2009 release list, we are in for another bankrupt year if you want to play all the top games on the 360 alone (and there is a big chunk of new IP and IP brought into the HD era)

- MS' new and future EU strategy is to be more localised with retailers/games and its working very well this holiday

- There is a long more way to go with pricing of the Elite model and downsizing of consoles, so there are similar opportunities for both MS and Sony here

So this mean MS xbox 360 had less sale than ps3 in PAL region.

WTF, I don't believe.

Anyway PS3 is undertracked in Europe these weeks.
It is selling very well there + temporary price cut in France (-50€) until January 2009.

I love the degree of certainty that everyone has when spouting off their over/under-tracking claims...

I support your basic idea, but this is just wrong.  MGS has nothing to do with Halo, Gears, Fable or Mass Effect. 

Lionhead is a second party company to Microsoft.  But Bungie, Epic and Bioware are all third party.  They are not associated with Microsoft Game Studios.

Lionhead is first party.

Halo: IP owned by Microsoft, so they choose which developers and which games come out when. They got Ensemble, their first party studio under MGS brand, to make Halo Wars. They got Bungie, now an independent developer, but there are MGS staff working on Halo 3: ODST. They are making other unannounced games, most notably Peter Jackson, Ryan Payton and Gearbox (rumour) + MGS staff. MGS has everything to do with Halo's future.

Gears: IP owned by Epic but published by Microsoft and all indications clearly show it will continue and stay on 360. I would say 30% of team behind Gears 2 is MGS financed, including almost all the QA and marketing team. Just look at Gears 2 credits in the manual. There is a whole page with all MGS names. Admittedly, MS or Epic can decide to pull out of Gears partnership and pull out their MGS staff but this would be one of the stupidest moves in gaming history seeing its selling crazy on the 360.

Fable: IP owned by Microsoft and Lionhead Studios is paid under MGS. Again, whole page full of MGS staff in Fable 2 manual so MGS has say in future development and control on future publishing i.e. when and what comes out. Lionhead is as much second party as Insomniac, Naughty Dog is to Sony - but ultimately Sony and the developer need to agree on when what comes out.

Mass Effect: IP owned by BioWare (I think) but all indications point towards a trilogy on 360 with MGS staff working on it. Mass Effect manual has MGS staff again here. The biggest indicator on prolonged MGS involvement is the fact that BioWare spokesman has asked gamers to retain their savefiles for ME1 to use in ME2 and will use the same assets/scenarios. This indicates using the same teams and platform exclusitivity. Admittedly this is the weakest involvement of MS but still, no big evidence to say otherwise.

Microsoft owns Lionhead and Sony owns Naughty Dog. Insomniac is independent.

@Bitmap

OK cool, didnt know that. Insomniac is a great studio.

As long as the company does well in the long run and continues to dish out awesome first party games then I'm on board :)