who's winning this round, then?

everybody, if analysts are to be believed:

Xbox 360, PS3 Meet Sales Targets (Bloomberg)

except that it's not about gaming, per se:

Sony is billing PlayStation 3 as a complete home entertainment system. In response, Microsoft said yesterday it will enable the Xbox to function as a television set-top box in time for year-end holiday shopping.

meanwhile, in a post entitled Will Wii Win, a games developer blogging at Japanmanship answers simply: "Yes". he gives many reasons, including price, availability, IP and game choice, but the interesting takeaway is:

Whereas Sony and the unlucky but plucky Microsoft are pushing power over anything else, Nintendo has wisely focused on the products, the products that will sell the console.

Sony and MS have over-specified their consoles because they're targeting non-gamers via making their devices more than gaming machines; Nintendo have gone the other direction, and are converting non-gamers into gamers via an under-specified but innovative machine. it certainly remains to be seen who does best out of this current console generation, but it's safe to conclude already that Nintendo will be doing much better this time round than they did last time with the GameCube.

How much better they do may well define the direction of the next generation of game devices.