well, i am getting kind of tired of people saying "xbox 360 will come in a disappointing third".  I don't understand how they can say that without any evidence.  sure, ps3 had a great q1 and q2 2008 line up, but after that? the sales trends are obviously saying that xbox 360 will come in second.  if you have an Intelligent argument, please post.   

Don't ask me. I've always been saying that the 360 is going to finish in second. There's no real compelling argument that explains how the PS3 will overtake the 360, They boil down to two things:

1) ZOMG GT5 FFXIII Blu-Ray awesome!!
2) ZOMG Japan!

and while both of these arguments will help the PS3 a little bit, I very much doubt that either of them will be enough to overtake the Xbox's lead any time.

More than likely you are hearing a lot of that around these parts because most people around here either like Nintendo or Sony. I think VGChartz never took off very well with XBOX fanboys because this site "undertracked" the 360, at least in their eyes. That mostly has to do with the difference between units shipped (The number Microsoft gave) and units sold to customers (The number VGChartz uses), but nonetheless the damage was done.

I think that many people, however, think the 360 will wind up in second, but err on the side of the Sony Juggernaut simply because they had such a commanding marketshare the last two generations. It's kinda like betting against the incumbent in a political race....most incumbents win, just because everyone knows their name.

Because everyone believes that the sony brand name will suddenly push units like no other next year...

I think 360 will be 3rd because of Japan.
That's a lot of games that won't be available on 360.

360 is likely to remain a disappointing third in Japan. That said, for world wide, IMHO, I think it's going to be pretty close between second and third place, and I think Sony has a good chance of coming out second, but so does Microsoft.

Only a year ago, most people were predicting the Wii to come in third.  A lot can happen in a year...  Actually, if there will be a disappointing third place for either Microsoft or Sony, and not just a close race between second and third place, I predit the next 2-3 months will be critical in defining it.

i think 360 and ps3 will finish very close, within 2 million of each other. the reason:

obviously 360 has a huge lead which seems insurmountable but you gotta break it down by territory to get my answer. ps3 sells poorly in japan, poorly in the usa, and is starting to sell okay in europe. 360 is dead in japan and always has been, now sells poorly in europe, and is selling well (great recently) in usa. the thing is, 360 only has one strong market and even though its the biggest market the 360 only caters to hardcore gamers. so even though it will trounce the ps3 in america it will eventually run out of people to sell to because casuals won't be buying it. thats the main problem with microsoft, its definitely the most hardcore system but because of that it has no widespread appeal. and its already dead in japan and ps3 will probably take over the europe hd scene from 360. so i see by the end ps3 beating out 360 by about 4-5 million in japan (5-6 mil to 1), it catching up and beating out 360 by 5 million in europe which i got just by taking this weeks sales difference, rounded up to 35,000 and extrapolated over the next 4 years and taking into account 360s current 2 million unit lead. then in the usa i think 360 will beat it by over 10 million. lets just say 13 mil. so when you figure that all out i have 360 winning by 3-4 million. so thats a bit more than the 2 mil difference i stated earlier, but now if you take anyone who sony fanboy they are gonna automatically inflate sony's likely future sales so then you've got a ps3 that sells like 10 million more than 360, even though that is highly unlikely.

basically its 360's american vs. sony's japan and europe. i say america wins cuz we are the best country!! but some people actually think american ps3 sales are gonna pick up a lot.

@ ilovetogame
great analysis, you didn't sound like a fanboy

USA #1!!!

I think people tend to say Xbox360 will be 3rd place because PS3 is outselling Xbox360 everywhere except North America. When we align launches we see that both consoles have a slow first year and are head to head ever since the PS3 has cut it's price.
Basically PS3 is selling just as much as the XBox360 in it's 1st year without any system sellers. Big titles are coming up that have proven to be Sony system sellers in the past. And at the current more reasonable price point it has a good chance to catch up the Xbox360 in a couple of years. Perhaps it's catching up too late and by the time that happens this generation might already be over. The fight for 2nd place is gonna be close to the finish.