Sony believed that the kids, teenagers, adults... fuck everybody pretty much owned a PS2... would buy a PS3 due to their brand name's strength, recognition, and hopefully loyalty that was established over the years. Sony was fucked pretty hard in the ass when they over estimated that brand loyalty. 

So the question is, do you believe that the kids who were drinking Mountain Dew, playing Halo, and using internet/gaming lingo freely will buy the next Xbox instinctivly due to the brand strength, recognition, and *drum roll* loyalty that established over the last few years?

I actually believe that the Xbox brand may have that loyalty, just as you see casual gamers instinctively going towards the billionth spinoff of Guitar Hero and buying only a few AAA games (that are usually sequels).

On the other hand, Sony believed it had brand loyalty, after a decade and half of being the dominant console.

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Personally I think that Xbox has established some brand loyalty, just as the Play Station has established brand loyalty. Those people are, us, the fanboys. The 2 consoles I think have a guarunteed population of people who will buy the next systems. The rest, the more casual gamers, I think will go depending on the sequels and franchises established by the new IPs once the old series and franchises have been exausted by the likes of Activision, along with the usual factors such as price, marketing, etc.

Wait for the PS3 to hit the same price as the 360... then ask me this again.

??? This is a question about the next generation. I'm sure that MS will also make sure that the 360 is always cheaper than the PS3 as well.

true, true ^ and if the rumor is true about the slim xbox 360 I might get that one for the heck of it.

I think it's the social aspects and community features of Xbox Live that's establishing the brand of the Xbox. Xbox Live is currently the strongest digital service on consoles.
No doubt there will be several gamers that will stick with Microsoft just because they don't want to lose their achievements/gamerscores, regardless of whether the service sucks or not. We are already seeing that with the hundreds of thousands of Xbox owners that still back X360 despite RROD failure. There was some guy on Neogaf that had his Xbox 360 die 12 times! And he still comes back to the Xbox.

But I think Microsoft might face a serious problem later: since Xbox Live requires subscription it will gain "full" members far slower than Sony's PSN and Nintendo's whatever, and if Sony/Nintendo do up the quality of PSN/whatever, then Xbox Live could be "royally screwed".

This is about who wins the "Social Gaming" race.

wait why this is about sony and microsoft? in the microsoft forum.

i don't believe that, recent bump is 360 sales its due a price cut, it actually require 2 in europe and japan. half the price the cheapest PS3.
and cheaper than the PSP. while i agree sales are good, they don't look like brand loyalty yet, so it's better to wait next gen to see if the next xbox sales are actually just as good they are now.

Fucked in the ass? I'm lovin' how you got away with that!!

That's really interesting and correct I think. The problem with the PS3 I think is that it doesn't have a true sense of an avatar. Sure you have Home, and people on both 360 and PS3 deride the Mii copies, but still you don't have a unified avatar for PS3. There's Home, LBP, the little icon you can get, etc. I have 3 alt. accounts (US, Japan, UK), and although I do have a main account, and trophies on it, I don't really feel that much of an attachment (but then again, I don't care about trophies/achievements in general).

I think that if Sony needs a system seller for the next game, it has to be a Socom type game, that gets people involved online like Halo/Socom did.

Microsoft, has the advantage in that people with PS2's didn't really get immersed into the online community aspect, and so they never established the commitment, attachment, and loyalty they have to LIVE and the friends they have on the network.

Yeah i know that. But the 360s cheapest model is half the price of what the PS3s cheapest model is.

What im saying is, basicly... wait until the PS3 hits a mass market price, then when that happens and it has Wii like sales(ish), we will see a lot more of this brand loyalty.