It's indeed happening..now understand that being cheaper alone can't boost sales..PS3 deserved every sales and this trend shall continue. 

PS3 does not deserve these high sales numbers. They just got lucky because they bundled some games with the PS3 which attracted more buyers. Sony put more effort into advertising the PS3 in America. The current sales trend will not last for long.

XBox 360 will erase the lost ground in 2010 when it has price cuts, Halo:Reach and the Natal launch which will help extend its lead to over 7 million over PS3 once again by end of 2010. 360 is still over 6 million units ahead of the PS3. Even 5 million would be a good lead which would take around 18 months to erase. First 6 months of any year is generally slow sales.

Imagine what a $99 XBox 360 Arcade would do for sales in last four months of 2010? Extremely unlikely Sony would drop the PS3s price down to $199 in 2010.

PS3 does not deserve these high sales numbers. They just got lucky because they bundled some games with the PS3 which attracted more buyers. Sony put more effort into advertising the PS3 in America. The current sales trend will not last for long.

XBox 360 will erase the lost ground in 2010 when it has price cuts, Halo:Reach and the Natal launch which will help extend its lead to over 7 million over PS3 once again by end of 2010. 360 is still over 6 million units ahead of the PS3. Even 5 million would be a good lead which would take around 18 months to erase. First 6 months of any year is generally slow sales.

Imagine what a $99 XBox 360 Arcade would do for sales in last four months of 2010? Extremely unlikely Sony would drop the PS3s price down to $199 in 2010.

at the end, if datas are exact, we will only remember that :

200$ 360 2008 BF < 300$ PS3 2009 BF

that is what I call a big surprise ...

Stop comparing the hard-drive less Arcade to the 120 GB PS3 slim. Last year the 60 GB Pro was much more popular than the Arcade and this year the 120 GB Elite is more popular. The HD twin demographic (young males with disposable income) doesn't necessary look for what is the cheapest. They look for value for their money, especially in this economy. And right now the PS3 slim offers that. The Xbox 360 isn't cheap and M$ isn't making it cheap because they'd prefer to stay in the black after all these years of investing in Xbox. Especially during these tough economic times.

It's not fair to bring the $200 Arcade into this. The Arcade is extremely bare bones. Without the hard drive, it's not suited for online at all. Without online, the Xbox 360 Arcade is basically an HD PS2/Xbox (assuming you buy the HDMI cable or HD AV cable seperately since those aren't included in the sku) with a beefier memory card (256-512 MB internal memory in the recent units). This gen is characterized by online functionality. Online play, DLC, XBLA games, etc. You are missing out on a ton without a hard drive. And quite frankly, I wouldn't recommend running games off the disc (running off hard drive will likely extend your console's lifespan), which is what you have to do with the Arcade. And what if your memory unit runs out of space for game saves? I have game saves for about 13 games on my memory unit (which I use as a backup in case my HDD craps out) and those game saves alone take up almost half the 256 MB. Now if you are an Arcade user, imagine that you add in the NXE update (which is like 120 MB). If you play a lot of games (more than a dozen), chances are you're gonna have to go out and either buy a memory unit (expensive rip-off) or go out and buy a hard drive (better bang for your buck). You are better off coughing up the extra $100 for the Elite or PS3 slim. That's why most 360 buyers get Pro/Elite. The week with that Wal-Mart promotion was the exception to the rule because the Arcade was basically $100, which makes the Arcade actually worth it for a change.

PS3 users who keep talking about the $200 Arcade don't understand just how little you can do with an Arcade and how much of a rip-off it is in the long run.

I could see the appeal of the Arcade to those who don't want to buy many games and don't care for online features much (ie. I know there are a number of people who bought an Arcade just to play the exclusive jrpgs on the Xbox 360 (well 'then' exclusive in SO4's case).) But unless you want a repeat of the PS1 and PS2 days (lasers getting weak or crapping out altogether), your best bet is to take advantage of the full HDD install feature that you get with the Xbox 360 NXE update.

fair enough point

Lets rework it:

300$ 360 2009 BF < 300$ PS3 2009 BF