Sony's PlayStation 3 may have lost the battle for pre-Christmas sales, but the machine is forecast to win the next-generation console war, beating Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii hands down by 2010.

So says market watcher Datamonitor, which reckons Sony will have shipped 75m PS3s around the world by that year. The firm admits the PS3 won't dominate the market the way the PS2 has, largely due to the next-generation machine's late entry into the European market and the fact that Microsoft launched the Xbox 360 a year ahead of the its rivals.

Datamonitor's report, The Transforming Global Videogames Market, also pointed to a demographic shift in the market as the average age of console gamers increases to 33 years, well above the 18-24 age range the most active gamers have traditionally fallen into.

That should favour Nintendo and Wii, and may well prove another factor in narrowing Sony's eventual lead over its competitors.

Yesterday, it emerged US retail market watcher NPD recorded around 2m Xbox 360s were sold between the start of November 2006 and Christmas Day. Nintendo's Wii total was 1.8m units, a very good figure given the machine didn't launch in the US until 19 November, giving the Xbox 360 a head-start of almost three weeks. In the same period, Sony shipped 750,000 PS3s. ®