The PlayStation has long been challenging the 360 for hardware sales worldwide, but with over a year head start in Europe, Microsoft’s console has held a pretty healthy lead. However, it appears the tide is turning in terms of software sales.

According to recent European Sales figures, it seems that Sony’s latest price drop and launch of the PS3 slim is helping to shift multi-format games by the bucket load, outstripping the performance of 360 sales by a considerable margin.

Both Assassin’s Creed 2 and Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 2 titles have significant sales units in favour of the PS3 in this week’s chart, selling over 340,000 & 260,000 units respectively. That’s almost 65,000 more units than the Xbox 360 for Assassin’s Creed 2. More surprisingly, with the Xbox 360 seen as a hardcore gamers console you would expect Call of Duty’s latest title to have dominated, but the PS3 shifted a respectable 23,000 units more this week.

We should point out that Assassin’s Creed 2 for PS3 was the number 1 title this week in the All Formats chart too, so it certainly seems as though the power shift is slowly changing directions, at least in PAL regions. The US still report a stronger sales for both titles on the 360, this week.

So who will be the winner this Christmas? We’d love to hear your opinions at the Ultimate PlayStation forums.

We'd love to know your thoughts on this story, you can join the lively debate on all gaming subjects at the Ultimate PlayStation Forums