I actually noticed this some time ago and probably even mentioned it once or twice, that the PS3 was selling more or less exactly the same as the 360. When I first found VG Chartz's little graphing thing, that surprised the hell out of me. Because, as we all know, the PS3 is pretty much a failure in every corner... third place, too expensive, not enough games, corporate hubris. And the 360 has become the gamer's machine, with everybody lauding its incredible library and cohesive online system. If you ignore things like Microsoft's abysmal customer service and the terrible RROD failure rate, everybody's pretty up on the 360.

So I figured that sales would follow that popular opinion... and it never has.

That chart lines up the Wii, PS3 and 360 sales from launch day, so you can see how many consoles were sold from Month 1 of release, onward. Despite being more expensive, despite the insults and inanities of Sony's mouthpieces, despite essentially stabbing out the hearts of a world of PS2 fans... the failure PS3 has sold just as well as the success 360.

This means either they're both successes or they're both failures. And if you use the Wii as the standard, it's tough to use the word success. I mean, jesus. Look at that blue line. It's damn near vertical.

Whenever anybody brings up VG Chartz, there's a lot of screaming and moaning that their numbers are fraudulent. Especially if the quoted numbers are against somebody's personal favorite. Although I certainly see a lot of complaining about them, I've yet to see anybody prove that they're off.

Get ready for a PS3 sales boost now that HD-DVD has packed it in. For almost two years, American consumers have seen two side-by-side racks at retail: brown HD-DVD cases right by blue Blu-ray cases. There's a lot of people out there, new HDTV owners, who have been sitting this one out, waiting to see if either would dominate. Now they need wait no longer. Sony's marketing needs to jump on this right away, and start educating the public on the PS3's status as an excellent Blu-ray player. (Everything I read suggests this is true, incidentally, since the PS3 is more easily upgradeable as Blu-ray evolves. Compare that to the prevailing wisdom that the PS2 was merely a moderate DVD player... although I personally have never owned a DVD player that wasn't a PS2.)

Yes, Blu-ray movies are $25 to $30. We all went through the same thing when our long national nightmare of VHS ended, and DVD was the expensive alternative. In fact, I can even distinctly remember, back when the movie studios commonly thought that no one would want to buy movies but instead rent them, VHS movies routinely carried price tags from $60 to $90. Even the kids titles. So there's no point whinging about the $30 price because that's going to come down. And now that Blu-ray player sales are about to steamroll skyward, that price can come down all the sooner.

Even with all the bullshit from Sony over the past three years ("You'll buy a PS3 even if there's no games!"), the long tail of PS2 fandom is still out there. People want to follow them. PS2 owners have been moderately lucky in that the PS2 was still getting games in 2007. I'm sure many PlayStation loyalists have made it through the past year with little more than God of War 2, the GTA PSP ports and two Guitar Heroes. Not to mention catching up on anything they missed out of the PS2's vast and impressive library. Now that the Blu-ray feature of the PS3 is a definite benefit - as opposed to a potential waste - these unconverted will be re-thinking their frugal stance. Naturally, a price cut for Holiday '08 won't hurt, and it seems entirely reasonable to see a price cut if the machine can show momentum after the HD-DVD announcement. I'd also hope for a hardware redesign... seriously, the PS3 is too big and ugly. A slimmed down PS3 box selling for $300 has got to be Microsoft's greatest fear right now. If Microsoft comes in third this generation, the shareholders are not going to allow an Xbox 720.

Additionally, people trust Sony in ways that they will never trust Microsoft. The Xbox and Xbox 360 are just about the best-liked products Microsoft has ever made, and yet they're beset with reliability issues and will never turn a profit. Meanwhile, when you want to buy the best television set out there, you go Sony and always have.

Regardless, nobody's catching the Wii. Only Nintendo can screw that one up.