If you’ve been paying attention to recent NPD reports over the last six months, you’d be under the impression that Microsoft’s Xbox 360 has been doing some serious damage in the gaming industry in terms of market growth and share. However, according to EA’s CEO John Riccitiello, Sony’s brand has been dominating on a global scale and has more “sway” than Microsoft in the global market.

Riccitiello also believes that Sony’s PlayStation 3 is gaining ground on Microsoft’s 360 due to its pull in the global market. While he does give Microsoft complete credit and respect about what the company has achieved this generation in terms of pure growth — and it has been impressive — he believes that Sony’s ability to be synonymous with gaming has allowed it to have a huge advantage over the competition.

“Honestly, I think that Microsoft has done great work the last couple of years, and they’ve made a lot of smart moves: hitting pricing when they needed to, the right combination of hitting price points and disk drive sizes that allow them to hit price points that matter, and they’ve done a great job with Xbox Live,” EA boss John Riccitiello told Industry Gamers.

“At the same time, the Xbox brand, the Microsoft brand, doesn’t carry anywhere near as much sway as the Sony and PlayStation brand do outside the United States, and so I think the reality is the international marketplace is just so important and it’s a natural advantage that no matter how good Microsoft is at growing their business, Sony has an almost-impossible-to-supersede head start.”

Surprisingly, Riccitiello credits Sony’s success to its ability to improve its online offering and to offer an engaging marketing strategy through Kevin Butler.

“In the last couple of years, Sony’s sharpened their marketing message, you know, ‘the platform with everything.’ Riccitiello continued. “They’ve actually gotten past simply Home as an online connected system for them. While I’m not sure that one would compare them in depth and breadth and features and support to what you have at Xbox Live, it’s good now. We have a similar share on both platforms. It’s not that I wouldn’t want to criticize one of the other; I’m not shy. I just think they’ve actually both done a pretty good job.

“The big disadvantage Sony carries is they have an expensive platform because of Blu-ray, so they have a harder time hitting price points. Microsoft has taken advantage of that and their online service, which really is the gold standard. Sony has [leveraged] their limited amount of unique content really well. They’ve done a nice job promoting the Blu-ray, their advertising and marketing campaigns have been stronger, and they’ve done a nice job of supporting some EA content to their own advantage. I don’t know that you’d point to either of them and say they can’t shoot straight or that they’ve given it up.”