My musings were about Slim's performance...the whole point of slim was to push more hardware and make them more competitive (with the obvious knock-on for total software and so on).
Re. Europe, MS claimed they were 1m clear right at the end of August. Which is handy for post-Slim comparisons.
So I factor in a gap of 1m there.
IF Sony closed that gap since Slim's launch in Europe...which is maybe possible...then the WW gap shrank by 35% since slim's launch.
(US gap at end of August was 7,653,400 in 360's favour. Japan gap was 2,166,105 in PS3's favour. For a net gap of 5,487,295 in those territories. Gap is now 4,202,228 - reduction of 1,285,067 (23.4%). Don't worry though...the rate of change will slow considerably now we're out of the holiday
)