This is rather interesting ...

Known facts for both systems compared ...

Look at these parallels ...

PS2 vs. Xbox

PS2 - first out of the gate
PS2 - won the hearts of developers
PS2 - won GTA exclusivity for two years
PS2 - had infamous disk read error
PS2 - ended up winning the last-gen war

Xbox - was last out of the stable
Xbox - was rather ackward
Xbox - had a much higher price point that dropped very, very fast
Xbox - was more reliable
Xbox - lost the fight due to the PS2's domination

Now, let's look at this fight - sans the Wii ...

Xbox 360 - first out of the gate
Xbox 360 - is definitely much, much easier to develop for
Xbox 360 - has the 3 rings of death and scratching controversy
Xbox 360 - locked up exclusives, and stole some PS3 exclusives - or bought them ...
Xbox 360 - has a software title that sold 2.6 million copies on the first couple days release

and the PS3

PS3 - last out of the stable
PS3 - much, much more reliable
PS3 - much higher price point
PS3 - very hard to develop, developers say - more than once, mind you ...
PS3 - is history repeating itself? Me thinks so ...

I would definitely love comments on this view ...

/puts on flame sheild

i agree with you, and its why i think sony will do better with ps4, i truley believe that the ps3 was made to push blue ray, if not for blue ray, it would of been the price of 360, and would of had the chance to take the lead over the 360

It seems so, 360' head start helped them allot. If 360 gets 2nd place, or even wins the "console war", I would say that in the gaming business, it's 1st come, 1st served...oh, and with an affordable price :) (even if hardware sucks).

Agree madskillz and Lost tears of Kain.

BTW Lost tears of Kain are you playing Halo 3 tonight?

 SNES came out way after Genesis, yet still beat Genesis in the end.

OT, due to pricing and the various skus available I think this is not a good comparison. 

The wildcard is the PlayStation brand recognition. That can be a very, very strong wildcard. Sony isn't out of the race by any means. If they spent all of those big bucks on exclusives, I'd give the PS3 a good shot at passing the 360 in the long run.

/shares place behind Kains flame shield

Yes there are many parallels but factoring the Wii out makes it very quesionable at best, the 360 can´t do what the PS2 has done but neither can the PS3, the 360 (and MS) can be very happy if they can fend of the PS3 for long enough (best case cenario beating it... but very unlikely) the PS3 can be happy if it eventually beats the 360 by more than five to ten million... and they can both be happy if the Wii doesn´t get to much 3rd party support and doesn´t completly skyrocket.

I know many PS3 fanboys overuse thins phrase but the PS3 still has a brandname many people think highly even if is worse than in PS2 days it still does the PS3 some good.

Edit: Looks like Crucial pointed that out already (Welcome to VGchartz BTW) problem with this is you can never tell how many people really stick to a brand that was so popular (mostly) because of 3rd party games, Nintendo has their fans in a stranglehold since only the big N can give them their fix, if Sony ceeps loseing important 3rd party exclusives their brand name may become unimportant. 

 Oh, sorry ><  I didn't know that O_o (I'm from the PS1->  era xD)

@LostTOK
Mhm, Blu-ray pretty much gave them the punch...but if they do win the  "console war" they  will  most probably win the format war, and there Sony would be  MaDe! :P

I do not think that some small similarities are enough to make predictions like this.
Look at this from 1up and compare to the real world
http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3155102

@Leon: For most gamers this is unexeptable, sure Sony is only making business but they are loseing lots of fans due to their Blue-ray fight on gamers backs, a earlyer/cheaper PS3 would be doing much better now, I bett they though 3rd partys and PS2 fans would be more loyal... but they are also just making business.