The console wars appeared to be cooling down here in the United States. We have not heard much from fired up executives in a while, but it seems the major conflict in Japan has just begun. It is still the early days for both the PS3 and the X-box 360 in Japan, and Sony's marketing VP decided to let us all know exactly how he felt about Microsoft.

"I don't want to be argumentative" he began, "But I take issue with Microsoft either having a long tail, or being profitable, because they've never done either. They've never made a dime in this business." He went on to state "With the X-box 360 you've got an inconsistend design, some have a hard drive, some don't and none of them have Blu-ray, and the HD DVD will be out of business in a matter of months. Is this a 10 year product? And by the way it doesn't even work. Do they want to be selling it for 10 years and refurbishing them all for 10 more years? I don't think that's a 10 year product. You could disagree with me, or they could disagree with me, but I'd put that up against the PS3 any day."

Microsoft didn't just sit on their hands idly taking this type of abuse. Durring an interview with Game Daily Microsoft's corporate VP fird right back "Who's getting outsold by what, 6-to-1? You can bet that Sony built a long-term

business plan about being successful in Japan and that business plan is crumbling." The entertainment VP added "I built a business plan, but I don't think my expectations in Japan were anything close to what Sony's expectations are. They are failing. They're missing their plan by much more than I'm missing my plan."

With Sony's behemoth titles such as Final Fantasy XIII ariving, it seems the console war is going to intensify way more before it ever begins to cool down. Especially since both sides are forced to watch Nintendo laughing all the way to the bank with their already profitable software sales.