@Parokki

I remember PS2's Emotion engine was supposedly a terraflop monster as the Cell (on paper), with numerous other possible applications in medicine and whatnot. As a gamer I was quite disappointed. Not only the first Xbox was way ahead but the Gamecube also.

And as for the PS1, meh, we were kids back then ; ) I remember liking the PS1 for sharper images while the N64 was blurry. I loved Saturn too but 3D was just the thing back then. And don't remember any low blows from any except perhaps Nintendo with it's cartridge vs CD arguments and false HDD promises.

Internet flaming hadn't such huge proportions back then. The connections were so crappy the trolling/time ratio was reaaally discouraging.

@Sardauk

Even if the smaller developpers were stupid enough to buy Sony comparison in-game advertisers would quickly remind them how useless PSN infos are. Gaming is developping a third side (and even a fourth)  besides user demand and developper supply with constant ingame advertising (the fourth side is downloadable "cultural" content).

Advertisers need to have as precise targets as possible. The fact Live puts so much enphasis on user accounts (high security, huge switch costs, strong community building, addictive point system) while targeting the most adult gamers and willing-to-pay gamers only demonstrates how much advertising is going to be the new "argument".

A well developped in-game advertising environment ensures a new revenue for both platforms and developpers. It also lessens the inherent risk in marketing your game (establishing taste groups, correlations of all kinds, geographical sispersion, etc.).

While the partly bolded is true, Microsoft clearly stated that they are only counting GOLD! accounts that have been LIVE for the last 6 months.

The bolded is partly true because I have 2 PAYING gold accounts.

Yep, It is called customer segmentation (thanks to Datamining) 

Duplicate thread 14,3000

However, its still pretty silly of sony not to explain their figures...ms will be laughing right about now

17 million accounts...
minus 6 of my 7 different country PSN accounts.

Here's Greenberg statements to clearly state what was reported as 17 million by M$:

"Uh... A significantly larger number than 17 million. To be clear, we are pretty conservative on how we report our members. It is active members — you have to own an Xbox 360 and if you're not active in the last six months, we recycle the gamertag and we remove your account. It is a true number of the people we have on the service.

I think it's important to note, if you compare those to PSN, those numbers you can have just a PSP, you can create an account on the Web. We don't count Web accounts."

http://kotaku.com/5127839/microsofts-aaron-greenberg-talks-ces-xbox-360-in-09-and-beyond

The financial statements will also help to clarify what was meant...lol.