PS3              X360
1st year   8,334,451    7,942,398
2nd year  9,968,790    7,929,882
3rd year                       10,622,325

Haha amazing. X360 first year was better than its second year and look where it is now.

Price matters.  The PS3 at almost 200$ more expensive than the 360 throughout it's life span has consistently outsold the 360.  I would imagine the PS3 to continue climbing after a potential price cut in their favor.

Looks a bit different when you look at the whole picture here:  http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=54617&page=1

Even funnier is that I made another post using his logic (sort of) to give a time gap.  You mentioned the gap started at 1 year, then went down to 6 months according to him but at current sales rates, it's back to 10-11 months again.

2009 is when the real battle starts! all consoles will be at an affordable enough price and it will be the the first time for the ps3. i always wonder what the sales of ps3 will be like if it had a worldwide price cut.

*goal post moved*

Agreed. This thread is just ridicluous.

1. A price cut would kill the PS3.

2. 360 would follow with another price of their own.

3. R.I.P PS3

It is interesting that it's only about 6 month behind now instead of a year...

http://vgchartz.com/hwlaunch.php?cons1=X360&reg1=All&cons2=PS3&reg2=All&cons3=X360&reg3=All&weeks=130

However, the 360 made a lot of progress the last 6 months of this year. It's unlikely that the PS3 will be able to stay only 6 months behind unless Sony does something. That said, they can probably wait for a price cut or other measures until they fall back to matching the 360 launch aligned.

PS: Don't switch the extra X360 to a Wii, or it will mess up the perspective of comparing the PS3 to the 360.

The only problem with your assessment is that Microsoft has just about hit the breaking point on how low they can drop the 360's price. They can drop the arcade $50 to $150 and have the Pro follow suit in 2010, but that's about as far as they can go. Sony on the other hand could easily afford to drop the PS3's price down $100 by the end of 2009 and probably by ANOTHER $50 to $100 at the end of 2010. Furthermore, Microsoft has far less of an untapped market to delve into now that they've hit the magic $199.99 price point that many speculates keeps the biggest market from purchasing a system. Sony on the other hand hasn't even come close to that. They have over $200 in price drops before they even reach the biggest market sales.

Alignment of the two consoles based on same point in time is flawed. Only if PS3 was launched at the same time as XBox 360 back in 2005 could we really know what would happen if they faced off. Anyway PS3 still makes Sony a $50 loss for every PS3, over two years since launch of PS3.