Next-Gen is about the business of games, but we love the drama of a good ol" console war as much as the next person.

Apparently Microsoft does too, as evidenced by Greenberg, director of product management for Xbox 360 and Xbox Live, who went on a tirade last week in a Destructoid interview, calling out a competitor in ways unseen since perhaps the Genesis vs. Super NES days.

"...The days of Sony snowing the consumers and the press are over,” he said, accusing Sony of repeatedly coming up short on promises, subsequently firing off a laundry list of alleged examples.

Asked what prompted him to tear into Sony to such an extent, he told Next-Gen, "You know, I don"t know what it was, but something triggered the decision to take the gloves off a bit.

"I think that maybe for me it"s a little bit different because I"ve been on the Xbox business from the very beginning. And I"ve sat through years of press conferences and heard all those promises that, frankly, haven"t materialized.

"I rather that as much as we can--and I know that it"s hard to do this sometimes--actually deal in real facts. Let"s hold ourselves accountable to what we"re telling people what we"re going to do. We owe it to our customers.

"We"re all going to to make mistakes, and games are going to slip, and things are going to happen, but at the end of the day, I think Xbox has been a lot more straight with the customers about saying what we"re going to do and living up to it than Sony has in this space.

"I was just taking the opportunity to remind people of Sony"s history of over-promising and under-delivering."

But although Greenberg won"t back down from his earlier comments about Sony, he did throw at least a bit of appreciation to his competitors.

"We"re still humble. ... We"re not blind to the fact that the Wii has had tremendous success in selling hardware, we"re not blind the the fact that Sony is a very formidable competitor. ... We recognize the importance of our competitors. They keep us sharp and on edge and on top of our game as well."

Nevertheless, there is still a heated rivalry between the kingdoms of Xbox and PlayStation.

"I was a bit surprised at the reaction [to my comments]," Greenberg admitted. "I got a lot of interesting internal e-mails about that. I think I spoke for what a lot of people have been wanting to say for a long time."

For the full Greenberg NPD interview click here.