PlayStation 3 sales boom (is over)

It was almost too good to be true for Sony, wasn't it? After three weeks of improved sales for its PS3 console, the status quo seems to have been restored once again. PS3 sales last week plummeted back to where they were before the price cuts and the launch of the 40GB model.

Sales of the Xbox 360, in contrast, have held pretty steady in the last few months. An average of around 11,000 of them are sold each week (according to figures from VGChartz), while PS3 sales have been fluctuating violently. And now the PS3 has nestled back into its former position in the sub-10,000 group.

PS3: to be or not to be?

These figures come from VG Chartz, and the dip in PS3 sales could again be linked to the fact that there is a perceived lack of quality games for the console. After all, the 40GB PS3 is now retailing for £279 on Play.com, and that's the same price that the Xbox 360 Premium retailed for, for over a year.

So any arguments that say the PS3 is still overpriced are probably now without merit. It's an affordable console, it's just that there aren't enough triple-A titles to get people interested.

Take a look at Metacritic's Xbox 360 and PS3 top scoring games. There's only one must-have game for the PS3 ranked above 90 - Call of Duty 4. In comparison, high scorers on the Xbox 360 list are Bioshock, The Orange Box, Call of Duty 4, Halo 3 and Virtua Fighter 5.

Most of the good titles that are available are also offered for the Xbox 360, and Microsoft's console currently beats both the PS3 and the Nintendo Wii on attach rate. Nearly seven games are sold per Xbox 360 console, compared to nearly four for a PlayStation 3. Wii owners have, on average, three games according to the research from NPD.