Xbox 360 was a breath of fresh air for Microsoft on the console market dominated by Sony. A 7% breath of fresh air. Because since Xbox 360 hit the shelves, Sony has lost no less than 5% of the console market. All that while from the last quarter of 2004 to the third quarter of 2005, Xbox game sales amounted to $1,126,022,000 since Xbox 360 was released and, for a comparable period, Microsoft's gaming revenue for console jumped to $1,336,411,000. This figure is illustrative for the sales of $757,464,000 for Xbox 360 and $578,947,000 for Xbox.

Sony only managed sales of $2,084,636, 000 from Q4 2005 to Q3 2006 compared to $2,389,120,000 of the similar period 2003 - 2004. But bear in mind that these figures are for PlayStation 2. And even with the next generation console from Microsoft, Sony has managed to keep the lion's share of the market although surrendering an important proportion of it to the Redmond Company.

Microsoft's market share of 36.1% represents 20.47% for 360 and 15.64% for Xbox. The fact that Xbox 360 is outperforming its predecessor is an indication that Microsoft is moving in the right direction growing closer and closer to Sony. It will be interesting to see how the market shares will evolve in the last quarter of 2006, now that Sony has introduced PlayStation 3 in the equation.