Wow, this topic is a fanboy fest:

@grognard
You might as well read my post rather than assuming I was engaging in militant fanboyism. I didn't say the 360 had more FPS, i said it had a more popular library of games for FPS fans, which it does. I made no implication anywhere in my post that the PS# had a broader games library, so I've no idea where you got that from.

In fact, you seem to have interpreted my entire post as anti-360, which it certainly wasn't.

w.r.t. Forza and GT, I disagree with you. Whilst, Forza may have by now surpassed GT, it certainly doesn't have the same fanbase that GT used to have. Now, whether GT still has that fanbase remains to be seen, but Forza has never seemed to capture gamers imagination like GT did.

Another couple of points about the way this round may pan out;

1) Interestingly, the rise of online play (this is the first round where it has really been a central part of the console package) means that people are encouraged to buy the same consoles that their friends have (so they can shoot at each other). This has definitely aided the 360, as the first console to come out (as some of your friends were already likely to have one).

2) I believe that the effect of the Wii has yet to be fully seen on this round. I believe that it is going to generate a sort of "second wind" in the console wars, as people who own Wii's and have been playing them for a couple of years start to fancy a more powerful console. I'm putting personal experience here, as I got a bit bored of my Wii towards the end of last year, and only bought a new console recently, where I'd usually get one of the "proper" consoles near the start of each round.

@jb1, the games library is, of course, personal preference, but I will agree that in the current climate (i.e. the west is obsessed with FPS) the 360 library is probably more popular. I really think the end of this year is going to be key. There will be a LOT of the semi-casual PS2 gamer crowd looking for the new Gran Turismo, and if Sony tie-in a price drop they could really breath some new life into the PS3.

(I'm not sure if the popularity of GT is the same in the US? Here in the UK, it's a seriously big deal. Of course, the console sales numbers are substantially different here to those in the US anyway.)

I pretty much feel this is due to MS getting the first next-gen console out the door first. It was rushed, it was buggy and failure prone, but it got major traction early on because it was the first new system out. An impressive number notwithstanding, and its customers are puzzlingly loyal(see Nick and Nolim above), but wow that's been one messy ride!

Strange that they didn't just hold this news for a few days and announce it at E3 as this is the type of stuff the big three usually bring out for that show. Impressive numbers regardless showing healthy growth from the last generation.

Barla - now you're reduced to outright lies. MS does not sell refurb units as new. No major corporation sells used product as new in the US as the penalties far outweight any potential benefit of doing so. Inventory is managed on a FIFO basis and there is a period of time where inventory of old components has to work through the system before it is replaced with the new.

Barla and Darren,

Can we please avoid falling into the same BS argument that comes up every so often? We've been over this a million times. If your 360 dies (RRoD, E74) you're covered for 3 years. Only a moron would BUY a new one while their warranty was still valid and considering the 360 hit its 3 year mark just ~6 months ago, that would only leave 6 months of non-warrantied dead-360s. And since MS only sold 1.5 million or so in its first six months, only 1.5 million 360s as of this month would have been out of warranty. So, with simple process of elimination, one could conclude that anywhere between 1.5-3.0 million 360s (considering a smaller percentage of people had dead disc drives which were only covered under the 1 year plan) purchased out of the 30 million were potential out-of-warranty 360 owners who were forced to buy new when theirs died.

Anyway, instead of trying to be a naysayer as Darren and Barla are, I'm going to congratulate MS as they've done a great job so far this gen. They've surpassed the life-time sales of the original Xbox (24 million) in just 3 1/2 years and staved off competition from the power house Sony and their PS3. They are actually increasing their quarterly sales this far into this generation as their competition is either increasing slower (Wii) or actually decreasing their quarterly sales (PS3, PS2, PSP).

Considering the whole RRoD debacle, it's impressive what MS has managed to do this gen. They've cemented their position as this gen’s HD leader and continue to have success with their hardware and software sales. Congrats.

I wonder how many of those sales have come from people buying a new console when their old one ran out of warranty?