It seems like one good month in terms of sales was enough to raise the optimism of Sony’s officials about the future success of their embattled gaming platform.

Last month, boosted by the release of Metal Gear Solid 4, PS3 sold 405,500 units in the United Stats.PS3 has outsold its main rival, Xbox 360 in 2:1 report, but still trailed behind Nintendo Wii, which sold 666,700 units.

However, in terms of global sales, PS3 is far behind Nintendo and Xbox 360, which both have already surpassed the 10 million units milestone. Still, it seems like Kazuo Hirai is optimistic about the future of PS3 and in an interview with Financial Times he expressed his believe that in nine year PS3 will surpass its predecessor PS2.

Kazuo Hirai said that he hopes that PS3 will sell 150 million units worldwide. Sony’s PS2, which was released in 2000, has sold so far 140 million units globally.

Unfortunately, starting with May, NPD said it won’t publish anymore the PS2 figures, but in the past month, PS2 outsold PS3 almost constantly.
Last week, Sony has launched a new version of its PS3, based on the current 40 GB version. The new version will have the same technical specifications as the 40 GB version, but a larger, 80 GB, hard drive. The price of the new PS3 will remain $399.

Sony’s move followed after in a pre-E3 press statement Microsoft announced a new price tag of Xbox 360 Pro and its replacement with a new version.

Microsoft announced it will sell the Xbox 360 Pro with 20 GB for $299 until it will clear the stocks. Then it will be replaced by a 60 GB version, which will be sold for $349.

However, the analysts noted that Microsoft’s price cut could not be enough to revive the sales of its console. Furthermore it remains to be seen if the PS3 will manage to keep its strong sales, as the halo effect of Metal Gear Solid 4 will slowly fade away. However, for the moment, at $399, with a Blu-ray unit and a 80 GB hard drive, PS3 seems to be a better choice than Xbox 360.

According to the British gaming site CVG, Signal Hill analyst Todd Greenwald thinks that Sony's PS3 now has now an advantage. "Sony [is] well-positioned for first time since launch," said Greenwald in a post-E3 investor note. "Sony's biggest announcement was a strong counter-punch to Microsoft's $50 price cut on the 360."

In fact, there were several predictions made by the analysts that in a long run, PS3 will emerge as the champion of the gaming console war, but sometimes in 2011.

For example in a research released earlier this year, iSuppli estimated that PS3 sales will reach 20.3 million units in 2008, up from the 10.3 million sold worldwide in 2007.

iSuppli predicted that until 2011, Sony will sell 38.4 million rising at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.3% from 2007 and Nintendo Wii will win the second place with 37.7 million units. Microsoft’s Xbox 360 will have only a market share of 29.8 percent with 32.3 million.

Until then, let’s see how what will happen in 2008 for Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.