In his recent retail sales preview for February 2009, EEDAR Analyst Jesse Divnich commented on what he felt was "sense of urgency" for the PS3. He comments that it seems like the PS3 has become doomed to be permanently behind the Xbox 360 in the U.S.

"With the PS3 expecting to post its fourth monthly year-over-year decline in a row, we are becoming concerned with its position in the market," said Divnich. "While Sony has an impressive holiday 09 line-up, backed by the likely God of War 3, we are concerned with sales in the short-term. Even a price drop, which is expected to happen before June 2009, is unlikely to propel sales ahead of last year for the first half of 2009. Furthermore, Microsoft's campaign to position the Xbox 360 as the 'core' console of choice has been effective among the hardcore gaming crowd. Case in points is Microsoft's recent announcement of a Resident Evil 5 hardware bundle (MSRP $399.99), which is a deal between Microsoft, an American company, and Capcom, a Japanese company. Such a deal would have been unheard of in the last generation and its presence in this generation only reinforces the idea that even publishers are beginning to recognize the Xbox 360 as the superior console for targeting the core gaming market in North America."

He wasn't all bearish on Sony's console, however. "That being said, we do believe that the PS3 is a console with a '10-year life cycle' and the PS3 will gain a tremendous amount of ground in 2011 through 2017, when the console can be positioned as a cheap Blu-Ray player, but we do note that we have some short-term concerns with the console," noted Divnich.

http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/news/ps3s-sense-of-urgency/?biz=1