Not to be outdone, Microsoft Director of Product Management Aaron Greenberg , accusing Sony of being too "comfortable," "complacent," and focused on "hardware specs."

But Greenberg goes one further, really laying it down:

With a U.S. install base lead now of more than 7 million units (according to NPD), I can’t imagine any scenario where the PS3 can catch up with us. In fact, even if you doubled the current PS3 sales and Xbox 360 remained flat, they couldn’t close the gap until 2014.

Read that again: "Couldn't close the gap until 2014." Five years from now, and two past analyst predictions for when we'll see the next round of hardware.

No one's arguing Sony's got its work cut out for it with Microsoft leading by more than 2-to-1 in U.S. hardware sales.