Apparently all these PS3 fanboys care because they base this early launch in their "aligned" launch figures.  Pretty laughable, really.  They'll do anything to try and make it look like the PS3 is doing better than it is.   I guess they don't realize that the 360 is likely to continue outselling the PS3 year after year until the next generation, so the whole "aligned" launch tactic means nothing since they will never catch up sales-wise.

See I totally disagree.  Aligned launch figures are pretty good measures of future success because the reductions in hardware costs and everything else are very much a typical, forseeable thing. 

For example :   Assuming Product 1 / Product 2 are both on the market for 10 years a piece. 

Product 1 (Millions of sales)                         

Y1   5

Y2   6

Y3   8

Y4   10

Y5   12

Y6   15    (Optimal price point)

Y7    ?     Down from Y6 (Saturation point)

Product 2 (Millions of sales)

 Y1   6

Y2   7

Y3   9

Y4  10.5

Y5   13

Y6   ?     (Optimal price point)

Y7   ?     Down from Y6 (Saturation point)

Above is a similar circumstance to what we are currently seeing transpire. It's very easy to see the eventual 10 year result.

Sales of the consoles follow somewhat of a Bell Curve.  The 360 is getting to the age where it is reaching that peak price point. It hit the $200 dollar price range (Which is huge for consoles), sales are going to be peaking.  However, I would certainly expect that the sales will be down a bit next year. While the $300 PS3 will be up as it make it's climb towards peak sales.

It's really a matter of can the PS3 extend it's lifespan to at least one year beyond(Or in other words equivalent time to the 360?)  No one knows this answer but if the PS3 keeps tracking higher than the 360 (Which it truthfully should barring something extremely major) it will outsell the 360 lifetime.  If it cannot the 360 will outsell it.  It's that simple.

Under the assumtion that an extra year's development time would have easily given MS plenty of time to add some better cooling into the 360 and add bumpers to the DVD drive, I would bet that the 360's RRoD would be non existant and the 360 would have sold even more.  I don't think a "high price" really compares to "high failure rate" when it comes to rep.  I have a feeling the 360 lost a lot more potential sales this way because people could just save for a few more weeks and get the PS3 anyway and avoid a failing console hassle.

RROD really didn't even become an issue until the 360 had a sizeable amount of consoles sold.  Many consumers of consoles are not exactly tech savvy or read video game forums to get the latest dirt of RROD or Xbox 360 issues.  So I don't think the RROD issue was nearly as big as you imply it to be.  Especially when you compare the full coverage warranty of it.  Parent's don't care as much if the system breaks and it's covered they do care about the high price tag.

Regardless, this is a pointless exercise as there is no way of proving this one way or another. The 360 has sold more consoles overall but the PS3 is selling more consoles per day.  So...I guess we'll see in the end.

Aligned bodies do!

Wow, stuff like that makes Michael Pachter (however his name is spelled) look like he earns his money.  Time shows most people don't seem to have a flippin' clue.  Where is Final Fantasy XIII again?  One person call starcraft nasty names because of the comment that Vs XIII would be out second quarter 2010, as in that prediction was supposed to be too late.

In regards to the question: If it happens, why would it matter?  Beating the 360 in total sales, after Microsoft releases the next generation XBox system is pointless.  Then Microsoft builds yet another 5 million console lead over the next Playstation and we are told once more that lead doesn't matter, because we need to measure how a system is selling NOW, to how its rival sold a year before.