that is obv. and it needs to be a big price cut 50 quid wouldnt do enough it would need to be 100 or mayb more the xbox 360 in the UK here cheapest is £130 thats just the console with no HDD. if the ps3 was £200 with blu-ray HDD a few games thrown in it would make people think twice and sony would also need to address how the ps3 is better for value. even now tho if you by an xbox 360 then get a HDD get xbox live ,battery charger the price still equals close to the ps3 and you get more from the ps3 so its worth your money but people dont see it as clear as others do.

To all the idiotic 1 sided, 'gamers' on N4G, read the damn article and understand that this fierce competition is bringing out the best in all companies involved.

this gen but i would say ps3 would beat the 360 if they roll out a price drop or even two price drops (one before christmas) with good games like GT5,GOD3,FF13 it would make japan sales shoot throw the roof with GT5,GOD3,FF13. and that just japan... if anything its the american market for ps3 where its hardest for sony.

PS3 17million *SOLD*
360, 20-25 *Shipped & Year head start*

The PS3 is surviving with or without silly flameboys.

I honestly feel like im taking crazy pills here.. I'm sorry...

Is the 2008 PS3 lineup not better by score standards? The same standards used to bash the ps3 library for having flops? Last time I checked, its top 10 2008 exclusives are higher scoring and non-terrible JRPG #435's as well.

Is there some grand news about the 2008-2009 360 lineup that I've missed? that includes games someone actually wants? And those games have some sort of press to look up? Or actually even buzz about?

PS3 sales are doing great, considering Sony is up 85% in sales from last year and this is without a desperate Pricecut. How about people wait until Sony actually prices the PS3 competitively with the Wii & 360 to then see how many consoles sell when the price point is at least on the same page.

How are people looking at 17million sold, with an expensive pricepoint, and considering it a bad thing? When its completely logical that there will be a price drop? When its already ahead of the 360 at the same time in its lifetime. Didn't see many articles about how the 360 is doomed at 17 million.

The PS2 and the PS3 are different beasts. But both are still competing in the open market. Unlike the Xbox.

america- alot more xbox 360's then ps3's sold there
eourpe - ps3 ahead (atm only by a few thousand) neck and neck
japan- ps3 way ahead xbox 360 has not even sold a million there far worse for 360 then it is for ps3 in america

and the rest of the world well same as eourpe pretty equal

the wii? errrrr owns all lol

over 2008 worldwide all year ps3 has outsold 360 (all year)

Nice article.I liked it

PS3 is outselling TRASH BOX all over the world except USA

that TRASH BOX 3 FIX ME is dead all over the world except USA

that trash box already costs 100 euro and 150 $

2008 is the last year of the TRASH BOX in console war

I sometimes wish the PS3 would die.
It would give me no greater pleasure than to see "gamers" squirming in a MS ruled gaming world.
Being charged a fee each time you turn on their console. Playing games that have not evolved for a decade (why would anyone feel the need to push the limits if you're the only one around).

I can just hear their cries for a Sony comeback.

But, alas, that will never happen.

hey im a sony fan , have all of their systems. an i love my ps3 and the 360 is cool also i just dont understand why sony is ignoring the whats clear infront of them all they need to do is to have a significant price cut to about 299 that way most people can afford it . lets be serious 400 dollars is alot of money to spend on a game

The way things are going I now kind of believe we just might be headed in a one console future direction. Things are looking very bad for Sony but now even MS has some issues arising which might give the big 2 a signal to unite. Yeah I know my comments a little far fetched, but it would be cool to see them joining up together to knock out the evil Nintendo empire of old folks.

I love Nintendo, but back in the day, they were decent graphics, amazing graphics in the case of the SNES days. (as well as Nintendo amazing game play). But the Wii is just plain sh1t. I mean, it looks like a Game cube tech, with a waggle stick. Now I love Zelda, I love Mario, Smash Bro's and Mario Kart...apart from that, why would I get one?
But MILLIONS of dopes are buying them and this is BAD for real gamers.
STRANGE TIMES......the industry is actually going backwards tech wise with Nintendo whupping 4ss the way they are.

Intellectual Training Program 101: Price cut! Again i repeat Price cut. It's obvious the only thing holding the ps3 back is it's price. Come on, what platform do you think people would prefer if the ps3 and xbox360 where priced the same? really a no brainer right?

Goes to show how scared and ignorant M$ was to release it's console ahead of a jaganaut like the ps3 even at the cost of unreliable hardware http://www.guardian.co.uk/t... I suggest you take the time to read it.

The ps3 by the mass is the preferable choice, but as long as the price is $400, people will only go for the cheaper option. Believe me all that will change when the exclusives role in and the inevitable price cut in the coming year.

Xbox rules?

Nope.

Wii rules, PS3 has the best games and hardware....xbox sits in some kind of broken, cheap limbo.

Thank god there is still people with right mind who can see monopoly is the worst thing for gamers

ew woman on the right is ugly

Even if you are a die-hard Sony fanboy, you have to admit things aren't going as smoothly as they did for the PS2 (which is often still outselling the PS3)

QFT

Well, we all know that the PS3 is not doing as well as the PS2 and PS1 did, but it is still doing pretty good and I think things will only get better from here on out.

Anyway, I think both consoles--PS3 and 360--are great and I want to see both of them do well. I think the competition between them is doing fantastic things for gamers and I hope it stays that way. The article was spot on. I appreciate that the author stated his biases up front and went on to write what I felt was a well-balanced article.

At least some of X360 fans have a brain
We need both MS and Sony, but the Wii is a different Story, I’m really worried that the hardcore market is going to be effected because of the Wii if not crumble

Wii really took the casual market that Sony was dominant on the PS2 era and the 360 is trying to grab some casuals from the Wii as well. (Good luck with that though).

The PS3 really needs a price cut to stay in the game.

"I'm the Boss to surpass Big Boss himself"

Very good article.

Competition *is* good.

A world where Sony and MS are battling it out for the console war is a better place. I 100% agree with the article. There is a need for both systems.

Let MS act like they're leading, let them stop paying for exclusives and dropping tons of ads, and we'll see where the PS3 stands.

And it will, its sad so many "gamers2" want a console to fail

xbox live is cool wii brings in all the new faces to gaming and ps3 has the best games and hardware.

I, too, completely agree with the article. Competition between the consoles is making things better for gamers. I want them all to succeed. The only thing that seems out of balance to me is the way the Wii is selling; it is totally out of proportion to the actual quality of the console itself. So, I hope the PS3 and 360 begin to do better and the Wii begins to fall down somewhat from the ridiculously high sales that it has been seeing. Other than that, I think things are basically nice the way they are (given the current economic climate). In general I want to see the PS3 and 360 stay fairly competitive with one another. The Wii, on the other hand, deserves to be in third place based on the current quality of the console and its games.

wii didnt take sony's casual market . it was handed to them on a silver platter because of a 600.00 launch price compared to the wii 249.99

Yeah the article did explain that having more competition is good, but come on half of the article has some fanboy spin to it, PS3 failing its doing pretty well, keep the competition explanation and insert the comment made by David from that article then you have a good piece

are good, atleast i know which one is better (PS3).

Competition is very good, but you really can't forget PC and Wii.

what is so attracktive on the wii that it is selling liek crazy. wii sports wii fit and the controller. if it wasnt for copieright issue the sony could easily put in those types of games in the ps3 and bring out a special controller for those type of games. then by bringning the price down to a more wii like price and bring back and improve the backware compatibility and kill off ps2 production then you will see alot more sales for ps3. i mean think for a second its only missing a phew key features and there you go its back in busness. the technologie is in it. it just needs the rights to do something similar to the wii. as long as there are games being anouced for ps3 exclusif then sony is here to stay. but surely. kill the ps2 production and bring backware compatibility to all ps3 and not just bring it back but improve it and you will see alot more sales going.

^^ did you not just read the article?! tool!

and all they do is bash sony and the ps3 saying ps3 isnt going to be anywhere next year and saying its dead get a grip cvause onece we are through out 2009 the numbers will grow and the installed base of the ps3 will grow say this by the time next christmas comes around and then you will have seen ps3 out sold the 360 and i wouldnt be suprised if m$ is paying peolpe to say these lame excuse all the time with big hitters coming in o9 and a price drop m$ will have to maybe even dropped the price or maybe the 360 is another dreamcast as of next year its 4 years old and it remeber xbox1 it got dropped after 3 years on the market as for the wii the ps3 hasnt got nothing to worry about because the installbase of ps2 ownwers are waiting for sony to drop t he price of the ps3 even they say the wii has slowed down in sales and thats arent a good thing when you know they dont have much third support from partys next year

"if the current economic crisis and financial losses Sony is taking forces them to jettison support for the PS3 or future consoles, I see a bleak future for gaming."

Who seriously thinks Sony is just going to walk away from the table? Really. If Nintendo didn't do it after flopping two consoles in a row with no other market to fall back on. Sony sure as hell isn't going to do it because they don't have the top spot at this moment.

This site is calling the death of Sony because this November it did worse than last (despite the reccession we entered in October). ONE MONTH folks.

"The 360 title Left 4 Dead sold more at 410K. Sony’s Little Big Planet didn’t even make the top 10"

How is that a comparison? Your comparing units sold on one title to not making the top 10 for the other? Didn't LBP hit a million a couple weeks ago?

"The PS3 is also slowing down in its home territory Japan, with the PS3 selling 30,309 units between Dec. 1 and Dec. 7 compared with previous sales of 34,978 units the week prior."

ONE WEEK. One. Week. It has been going up and down all year.

Analysts? Are these the same analysts that said June was going to be the biggest month for sales in gaming?

"Losing developers who used to make exclusives for them. "

Sony was the only one in a position to lose exclusives. So duhh it was bound to happen, they were talking about less exclusives before the 360 launched.

The poor assessment at the beginning makes it hard to take the rest of the article seriously. This article reminds me of the 2 billion dollar microsoft viral marketing campaign.

These Sony is doomed articles need to stop...they are now 1/3 of N4G front page...and none of them are based off of solid data. E.G.....Today I saw a Bluray is dieing article and then not 3 posts below it was a CNN article stating that 1/3 of dark night sales were on blu-ray and that bluray players were the big sellers to those with HD tvs.

when an xbox site feels the need to encourage sales of the ps3.

If that's not a sign of the times, then i don't know what is....

we all know that price is the only thing that MAY be holding the PS3 up a little bit .. but it actually doesn't i didn't mind the price and neither everybody else i know

even the people that are neutral and bought both consoles they actually bought the PS3 first :)

and they threw out the xbox after that whole death ring stuff ..

HD-DVD, I wander if warner are kicking themselves right now, surely if they had supported HD-DVD as well as bluray they would be making a lot more money right now, I always said they should support both, bluray was forced onto people even though the HD-DVD hardware was selling really well, all the film companies did was to alienate the public, this may seem off topic but my point is that you cannot make assumptions when it comes to the public, people want things they can afford, if people think technology is being forced upon them and is over priced then they likely will not buy it.

Just because one website said that PS3 is dying, every other games website is saying the same stuff, like they found it.

How can PS3 be dying when its selling more than is did in 2007, just because November wasnt soo good for PS3, because of the economic crisis and people prefer to buy something that is cheaper.

The PS3 is doing good, its nearing to 20kk units sold worldwide and its not stopping. Its actually catching up with the 360.

Image how much PS3 would sell if the price for it was $199.

There are great games coming for PS3 soon and thats all I care about. I also hope Microsoft makes some good FPS exclusively for XBOX 360, so I can give it a shot with my friends from real life ;) Not virtual:)

Bubbles please if I made a valid point ;)

excellent article.. its been a long time since i read an article that showed shy both consoles need each other to survive.

Standalone HD-DVD was much cheaper than Bluray and selling well so that would be there 1st reason, and the Xbox-360 ADD-ON was optional and if you could not afford it it did not mean no game machine, with Sony if you were one of there loyal supporters but could not afford a PS3 because it was too expensive then this was just tough luck, the Tec was always going to come but if you just want the games then then why would you pay so much when somthing else is so much cheaper and you could still have the option of HD-DVD if you wanted it, forcing technology is when the you assume that people will pay for it just because you say the it is justified, e.g not having bluray does not mean you cannot watch films does it, you have to make it worth the publics while, plus lets not forget that early adopters suffer a poor investment because they have to wait for it to take off only to see the sensible people get a bargain later on. In the UK the PS3 bundles are still £330-£380 approx, I can buy a standalone Bluray player for £200 and still have enough for a top Xbox-360 bundle, this is coming from a guy who wants a PS3 but it is still too expensive.

Now that Jim Ryan is gone just need to remove Herman Hulst from his position! And maybe give Shuhei the position he deserved.

This gen hasn't been the best for games, last gen consoles are still out there and now there's been talk of the PS6 and Xbox Two for a year or so. Many games this gen will be ported to next gen and the cycle will continue. The re-release of the Neo Geo AES+, games on cartridge for £70 ($95), gaming is going back in time. Gaming has gone pricing mad with the high cost of games, consoles and controllers. The men and women at the top are clueless.

It’s always interesting to hear behind-the-scenes stories like this, especially involving veterans like Shuhei Yoshida and leadership figures like Jim Ryan. That said, there are usually multiple sides to decisions at that level. It could be less about not “listening” and more about differences in long-term vision for PlayStation. Yoshida played a huge role in shaping the brand, so whatever the reason, his impact is undeniable.

If true, and I'm inclined to believe it is, it goes to show that Sony lost their way when they became more western/didn't respect the PlayStation origin story. Andrew House and Jack Tretton did great work, but they also didn't try to fundamentally change the PlayStation DNA. Ryan oversaw the death of Japan Studio and a live service direction.

I already figured this, good lord imagine if Shuhei took over instead, would've been a platinum era 😩

I miss the first three generations of PlayStation. The way they turned PS3 around, we knew they meant business. We were all worried for a bit there around launch. Eventually from 2008 they started shifting slowly. But since Yoshida was fired, it's never been the same. Still enjoy my PS5 daily. I got a backlog dating back to PS2 lol So I'm fine but new games aren't as appealing anymore.

It seems like we were thrown on to the worst timeline possible where everything is too expensive and the wrong people were put in positions that makes the world a shitty place. We could have had Shu as the head of PS but we got the shitty alternative. Same goes for everyone in power around the world. Doesn’t matter the company or country the majority of us got the shitty picks and the world is declining like never before. I do think PS can come out of this because of their studios, talent and IP but they need someone more in touch with gamers leading things like Shu was. They’re still the best place for console gaming imo but it could be much better than it is especially without the massive live service failures. The rest of the world I have a lot less hope for right now. Hopefully the pendulum swings back towards the good ole days but I’m preparing for the worst.

There goes illuminati distraction story

So now there's certifiable proof that Ryan was in fact "fired", as opposed to when it was first announced that he "retired", in order to save face.

There's another guy who recently "retired" as CEO of another large gaming company, after doing a dismantling job as lead for well over a decade.

seems legit, the business man, fires the one who has ideas to move the business forward.

Jim Ryan is the reason why we are entering year 6 since the PS5 launch and many of us don't feel like the PS5 has gotten started as yet.

I hope going forward, we will see a return to form.