News.com is reporting that overall console sales are down, with some 19.3 million units expected to have been shipped by the end of this year, compared to 35 million the previous year. In-Stat/MDR analyst Brian O'Rourke summed up the console wars like this:

[Microsoft and Nintendo are] fairly close for No. 2, and I think they'll remain that way. Xbox has done really well in North America, but it hasn't gotten very far in Japan and the rest of Asia. The (Nintendo) GameCube has a solid presence in all three (regional) markets, but they're not really knocking them dead in any of them.

As an aside, the article featured a link to GameSpot Trax, a feature that site uses to rank games according to unique users on Gamespot; at the moment Halo 2 sits atop the chart, followed by GTA: San Andreas and Half-Life 2.