PS3 vs. Xbox 360 vs. Wii: The Current Breakdown

Meanwhile, Sony is shedding exclusives faster than a cat sheds hair in August. April saw another big PlayStation exclusive, Guitar Hero, land on the Xbox 360, including extra downloadable tracks. This fall, the Grand Theft Auto 4 bombshell will drop on the PS3 and 360 simultaneously, representing the loss of another high-value card in Sony's hand. What's left? A handful of 2007-scheduled unknown quantities like Lair or Killzone? Metal Gear Solid 4? The vague promise of Gran Turismo 5 sometime next year? PlayStation Home, whatever that turns out to be? No wonder the higher-priced PS3 model outsold the basic nine to one -- it's not like there's any games to spend the extra cash on.

Heading into this generation, the PS2 held over two-thirds of the market, with the Nintendo Gamecube and Xbox roughly splitting the rest. Financial analysts 2K Advisors (which has no connection to 2K Sports) predicted by the end of this generation we'll have a much more equal split, and saw the PS3 losing ground to both the Wii and 360. Looking at the results so far -- and the year's game schedule -- it's hard to come to a different conclusion.

Guitar Hero II Killzone 2

The downside of such a strong opening position is that there's little room for improvement and plenty of distance to fall, and Sony had nowhere to go but down. Meantime, as the PS3, and its diminutive (but equally black and shiny) brother the PSP continue to come up short in the software department, Nintendo and Microsoft are both quite happy to take chunks out of Sony's hindquarters. It's not hard for shoppers to come up with convincing justifications for buying a Wii or a 360, but until some better games come along, the PS3's key advantages are narrowed down to the Blu-Ray drive's movie-playing ability, and the considerable future potential of the powerful hardware. Sony's games division is not in a happy place at the moment.

Fickle

But the games market is notoriously fickle. All Sony needs to do is show us one big exclusive game -- something that'll stand up to this fall's heavyweight tag-team of Mario Galaxy and Halo 3. Something that'll wow us like Grand Theft Auto 3, Wipeout, or Gran Turismo did, back in the days. Some indication that Killzone 2 will live up to the snippet of footage we saw in 2005, perhaps. Something, in short, that'll give PlayStation 3 owners a reason to get excited about their console. How about it?

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