If I were Greenberg, I'd be celebrating too. Think about this gen for them:

1. Profitable over the long term for the first time with Xbox brand.

2. Gained huge chunks of market share and brand awareness.

3. Dominant in English-speaking world where the most cash still rolls in from.

4. In what was their weakest year software-wise from an exclusive standpoint and in a completely awful economy, matched with cheaper and more popular competition (Wii) and redesigned, price-cut, superior technological competition (PS3), they still had an outstanding sales year.

5. In a fall/holiday where their primary competition had a redesign, price cut, Blu-Ray, free Wi-fi, and the Exclusive Game of the Year, they were within a couple percent in sales during holiday time.

6. heading into a year full of nice exclusives, including a new core Halo game and a Fable game and a relaunched console with Natal.

Why wouldn't he be pleased? Microsoft has to be absolutely thrilled with the way this gen is going, especially when you take into account the hardware issues. Even if Sony surpasses them in total sales, Microsoft as a corporation has had a successful generation in every possible way you can measure it.

It's a great time to be a Sony fan -> I know I can not wait for FFXIII and Heavy Rain and GT5 and all the great content headed that way. The PS3 has great momentum and Blu_ray is slowly catching fire and there's lots to be excited about. But it's still not even close to being a great time to be SONY. Even if they start making small profits year-to-year or quarter to quarter, they are in every way possible (Profits/losses, market share, brand cachet, corporate stability, etc. etc. etc.) the biggest losers of this console cycle. The only way they "win" this gen is if Blu_Ray goes dominant and in a HUGE way. Remember they are billions upon billions in the hole this gen on developing PS3 and Blu-Ray (and if you are going to count Blu-Ray income as a plus, you have to count Blu_Ray research/development/marketing/initial losses as a negative as well.)

I'd much rather be in MS' execs' shoes than Sony's right now - even if that would make me fat and bald. (Nice analysis of video game industry there, versus pointless insults by the way. Kudos.)

How about Europe and the rest of the world?  Japan is not a large market now.  It is important to game development, but not sales.

You got the numbers backwards, but it's not like it matters much since it's pretty much a wash.  Sony has brought itself back to being relevant in America again and really that's all they need to do.  The 360 has already succeeded and now they are being rewarded for it with what will probably be their most succesful fiscal quarter ever in the entertainment division.  Another year and Sony will probably see the same type of success.

They found this in Aaron Greenberg's office.

No Greenburg! This is how you do it

"The 360 was beaten by PS3 and Wii this month, it's unlikely we'll ever sell more than the Wii in NPD and it's going to be neck and neck with the PS3 for the months ahead"

THAT'S a response to make your shareholders happy

LOL!!! ppl really take these PR's seriously, their paid to praise their company if they dont they get fired get it? even if Xbox sold like 5 console this holiday they will still nitpick on parts where their doing good altho seeing it is kinda funny tho.

For all of you picking at this, you're really making yourself look kinda bad.

NPD numbers just came out yesterday, so now he has the numbers for the whole year.  So he can say that the 360 outsold the PS3 based on NPD numbers for the year.  That is not spin, its a reaction to numbers that just came out yesterday.

Also, why not use Greenberg's twitpic, since people want to pick at his weight (really, are all of you in elementary school or something?):

http://twitter.com/Aarongreenberg

And, for the record, I'm not defending Greenberg here.  I'm defending the relevancy of the VGC community.  We can be better than this.

Glad to see some people just can't get over that the 360 almost always beats the PS3 in America.

With a turning point in Q3 due to the re-release of the repackaged, lower cost PS3, looking at the yearly totals is essentially taking selective data with no account for major changes in sales trends.

From what the numbers show, MS LOST their lead over the PS3 for year 2009 in the territories outside of the U.S. and that was with their initial one year head start. Japan is same as it's ever been, only worse; no surprises there.

At this point, about the only way MS can continue to present current sales trends in a positive light is to concentrate solely upon NPD data which only pertains to the U.S. despite representing well under half of the overall sales. While true, it only represents a smaller part of the overall picture.

MS gets props for holding on to the NA console market over SCE, but it's still losing overall market share globally.

Grooski's talking about NPD numbers since this is a response to the NPD report.  It's actually 151k, for the record.