Sales of videogames consoles in the UK edged downwards by 1 per cent during 2003 according to ChartTrack's annual hardware figures - a fairly significant slowdown in growth, which may well represent the peak of the current generation.

As a quick comparison, the PS2 outsold the Microsoft Xbox by almost three to one, and outsold Nintendo's GameCube by over five to one. Considering the price differences, the technical inferiority of the PS2 and the strength of its rivals' first party line-ups, this is an incredible result for Sony, and it's almost hard to believe that the company has had such unprecedented success with a machine that had such a difficult launch period.

Microsoft, will reflect on a year that might have been, having only managed to improve on its 2002 sales by a disappointing 6.6 per cent - and all that despite the launch of the impressive Live service, arguably some of the best games of the year, two price cuts and some incredibly good value bundle deals that almost equated to the machine being given away for free in some of the more aggressive retailers.

Although UK sales of the Xbox - crucially - usurped the £50 cheaper Cube by 82 per cent over the course of 2003, the gulf between it and Sony was almost as vast as the year before, with an embarrassing one to three sales ratio between the Xbox and PS2. During the last six weeks of the year, the Xbox managed to account for a relatively meagre 17.3 per cent of the Christmas market share, and it wasn't until the last two weeks of the year that sales reached the levels that Microsoft would have been hoping for in its forecasts.