The XBox 360 has been receiving some positive press lately, mainly about the increase in sales in several markets. This will be a welcome change for Microsoft after the horrific “red ring of death” news previously.
If you look back through the news, you’ll see PS3 sales and XBox sales leapfrogging one another on an almost monthly basis. I won’t even mention the Wii because it is so completely dominating the overall current-gen console ware.
Outside of Japan, PS3 and 360 sales are effectively neck-and-neck, with the 360 holding a 6 million unit head-start. You can see this pretty clearly by the parallel green and blue lines in the TGDaily graph below:
Even within Japan, the 360 is getting the occasional boost from new releases and console price drops. While tiny, these victories to Microsoft would have been completely unheard of with the previous generation consoles.
Overall, I think Sony has a hard road ahead if they want to overtake the XBox 360 in worldwide sales. The 360 has just had another price drop, and is nearing a likely hardware refresh. Sony, on the other hand, is reluctant to lower PS3 prices – probably pointing to the lack of cashflow they are seeing from lower than expected game sales. If they (as you might expect) forecast console and game sales on the meteoric trajectory of the PS2, I’d imagine there are some pretty long faces around Sony boardroom tables.
