PS3 Currently Outselling 360 In Total Fiscal Year Sales

There was a time when it appeared nigh-on impossible for Sony to ever bridge the massive gap between their new PS3 and the competition. But by the end of the next fiscal year, the gap may be almost entirely filled.

The Big 3 have revealed their fiscal reports for the latter part of 2009 and Sony's primary competition, Microsoft's Xbox 360, now only holds a 5 million-unit lead over the PS3 in total worldwide sales. But perhaps most importantly, as noted by Examiner.com , Sony's machine is currently outselling Microsoft's for the 2009 fiscal year. Overall, Microsoft has sold 38.7 million 360s while Sony has sold 33.5 million PS3s and not surprisingly, the numbers for 2009 are the best yet for Sony. From April 1 through December 31, there were 10.8 million PS3 units sold, while Microsoft only sold 8.5 million 360s, although the Nintendo Wii continued to lead both by a relatively wide margin at 17.0 million units. As a frame of reference, though, Sony certainly didn't beat out Microsoft in 2008; there were only 6.9 million units sold in that same time period in 2008. Hence, thanks to the price drop and several must-have exclusives, the PS3 sold nearly 4 million more units in the last 8 months of 2009.  That's nearly a 46% increase.

It'll be interesting to see where the fiscal year ends up – it ends on March 31 – because Microsoft certainly has time to catch up. However, the prediction by analysts thus far is that Sony maintained their momentum through January, and with Heavy Rain hitting this month and God of War III cementing March's lineup, it's hard to see the 360 selling more units over the next two months or so. Still, the recently released and extremely well-received Mass Effect 2 will help, so it might be tight…