Is it really a confirmed trend, or just  the consequence of the economical situation and the fact that it is low-season for VG ?

@ sardauk: those could be considered "excuses" as well, seeing how people will automatically put "so, economical situation doesn't seem to result in even lower sales of the PS3, seeing how it's keeping up with the 360 quite readily" as a counter-argument.

PS3 is heavily outselling the XBox 360 in Japan, PS3 has triple the install base of XBox 360 in Japan and is selling around 5 times the rate of XBox 360 in Japan. PS3 released 12 months after XBox 360 released in Japan. Squilliam wants to exclude Japan sales data for his pointless fanboy argument. He wants to make the XBox 360 look much better than PS3. In reality we all know PS3 is performing well for a $400 system and PS3 weekly sales would be double XBox 360 weekly sales if PS3 price was $300.

The sad thing is the XBox 360 is half the price of the PS3 and it is even cheaper than the Wii which outsells 360 by more than two times the amount in weekly sales. The XBox 360 is actually performing poorly in sales and merely beating PS3 by 10k in worldwide sales is very pathetic.

Yes it does, PS3 is more affected (-7% for 360, -32% for PS3) but you have to consider the trend on a larger view.... the question is legitimate, especially of the WII goes down as well.

"U.S. stores sold 340,000 Wii players in April, down from 714,000 a year earlier, NPD Group Inc. said yesterday in a statement. Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360 console fell 7 percent to 175,000 and retail checkouts of Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3 slid 32 percent to 127,000."

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aDKWcm2eRPak

Isn't that a distorted view since PS3 had a price cut last year while the 360 was just trying to "survive" at that time?

Everything surrounding this situation can be turned into the advantage / disadvantage of whoever wants to "prove" a point.

Squilliam is using his good old FUD threads. So Squilliam, what about the sudden drop off in demand for XBox 360 in comparison to previous weekly sales? X360 adjusted down 100k systems in the adjustments and PS3 adjusted up 100k in console systems. You only have a 8 million 360 lead over PS3. PS3 is catching up in system sales.

8.2 million 360 lead over PS3 is gone. Only 8 million lead and PS3 is catching up and has new games to be released in second half of 2009. PS3 will eventually overtake XBox 360 for good with next long overdue PS3 price cuts in late 2009. PS3 will overcome the evil that is the XBox 360 once and for all. PS3 is going to finish second place in console sales wars behind Wii.

Exactly, but in contrary to fanboys(@megadude or happy fellows like @ps3beats360) I'm not trying to claim anything.

I'm more interested in how strategic plans are applied and what are their long term result: -7% vs -32%

Even if the sales are getting closer, in a very unique economical context, how can it be a long term victory for anybody ?

The thread title is that Sony needs Japan, and his numbers support that. Does anyone, anywhere question that the 360 needs NA? The answer is no. It's clear that NA is the 360's region. Squill's point was just that Japan is critical to Sony in the same way that NA is critical to the 360. And this is true, especially since it's a region that will avoid a Western console like the plague.

@ sardauk: then what do you think of the current trend? MS going to try to lift sales with the rumored motion control? Or are they just happy to be ahead of the PS3, with whatever margin that may be? Or are they going to keep doing the (smart) "they release something big, we put something big in its vicinity to eat its sales"-two step?

yeah and 360 needs america more than anyone else!

ps3 would be outselling it by 2 millions without it.