According to the chart, we're talking 77.6M vs. 77.5M. That's really splitting hairs about who is 'first.'

The part that's missing here is that those stats are after ~8 years of normalization. Many people that only bought a single console at first may now have two or three from that generation (i.e. could only afford one console, but over the course of close to a decade could save up and buy one or two more, especially after price drops).

The PS3 was also one of the first BluRay players, and IIRC in Japan Sony is a more trusted brand than Microsoft (or at least was). These are all factors at play here.

With Xbox Live Gold, Microsoft probably made more money, I'd say.