The 360 is currently selling better than it ever has, only the crazy and the uninformed are gonna believe a corporation will drop a consumer product that's performing at its highest in the middle of a recession.

@Halo_John:
A market that is going to sell a lot more consoles this gen than the previous despite the crisis suggests it's still a strongly appealing business. Even profitability, despite the crisis, isn't so bad, Sony is going to get it slightly behind schedule, but MS, for what we are allowed to know, got it almost on schedule despite the big RRoD troubles and Nintendo got it since the beginning, so largely ahead of schedule by competitors' standard.

      Gears of War 2's metacritic score is one point lower than Gears of Wars, and anytime a sequel doesn't rate as high as the first one, it is always a disappointment.  And Fable II's metacritic score isn't even a 90 and that is also disappointing for a game as hyped as Fable II was. 

      No, first I'm talking about how the 360's peak year was 2007 because that was when its best games were on it, and it did have a sales spike from these games.  Then it should have strengthened this in 2008 if most of its games had lived up to their expectations (which they didn't do which allowed the PS3 to outsell the 360 in Others and Japan most months of the year), but still managed a sales spike from Fable II and Gears of War 2 (even though they were still both mildly disappointing games compared to the hype placed on them) and two pricecuts.

     Now in 2009, it doesn't seem to have any exclusives announced at all that seem to really have the potential to really be outstanding games (maybe Forza but its up against GT5 and maybe Alan Wake but it could finish anywhere as low as the last Alone in the Dark or as high as RE5 in reviews, but I don't think anyone expects it to be better than RE5 which was only  a 9.0)

A new $400 console vs $400 PS3 console would sell like hotcakes. Sony would drop the price so quick.

It seems like every week we hear about another new exclusive for the 360.  We're hearing quotes from Microsoft executives about E3 in which they seem to think they're going to present an incredible showing.  So why not wait until after E3 before passing judgment on the system for 2009?

As far as peaking the system increases its sales every year and there are many great games in store it.  For all we know there could be a year in which Gears of War 3, Mass Effect 3, and other giants we haven't even heard about appearing on the system.

Want to know something else that's funny (well at least for some of us).  Sony fanboys have this same discussion *every* year and yet when the smoke clears they have their asses handed to them by games on other systems.  Maybe it might be more prudent for you to wait until the battle for 2009 is over before declaring a victor.

2010 is too early. 2011 is the sweet spot, for both Microsoft and Sony. Microsoft's got more than enough momentum to roll through 2010, and i think that moving too early would be damaging to them (although they're actually able to sustain their previous console this time. 360 isn't a money-sink like the original was)