Aside from another price cut. It seems to me that the early-mid part of 2010 is rather bare for Microsoft, with no really big exclusives coming out that can move a lot of systems. On the other hand, Sony seems to have a whole lot coming out early in the year. Will this be a classic case of Sony winning the beginning of the year, and then Microsoft taking it all back at the end (just like 2008)?

The PS3 is almost out of system sellers, with FFXIII (for Japan) and GT5 coming out soon. The 360 seems to have run out of big system sellers, with the possible exception of Natal (but we don't even know what software they have for that).

Pretty soon all the hardware boosts will come from price cuts IMO.

The XBox 360 has no system sellers left. It is a 4 year old system and its best days are long gone. Amen to that brothers.

What is this nonsense? Neither console has any "system sellers" left. As far as exclusives go, for my tastes, 360 has several must have exclusives coming up in 2010 while PS3 has none.

PS3 has GT5. And FFXIII in Japan (but that's not nearly as big a deal as GT5).

At this point in the life cycle, GT is not a system seller.  In fact, there has probably only been 2 system sellers this generation, Halo and Wii sports, and most of Halo's system seller probably occurred prior to its launch.

Alan Wake! Okay, not so much a system seller, but I just can't wait for this game.

For 360 Alan Wake seems to be the hype im hearing. There's Halo Reach but im sure definitely by now anybody that wanted a 360 for Halo wouldve gotten one by now. So yea..Alan Wake?

The only system sellers I see are Alan Wake and Halo Reach. I myself would buy the system for Mechwarrior, but I am probably the only one :)

GT5 is the first full GT of the gen and FFXIII is the first FF of the gen so they will be big and they will likely move some consoles. If anything, the systems push from Uncharted 2 has shown us that it is still possible for certain software to boost hardware sales. Uncharted 2 was a sequel to a franchise created this gen so it was a shock when we saw saw hardware boost (especially as you said, this late in the gen). GT5 and FFXIII are 2 established franchises comming out for the first time this gen.

Also this gen:

Gears of War

Metal Gear Solid 4

Killzone 2

All helped push their respective hardware to varying degrees.