Xbox 360 sales hit 19 million worldwide
But Microsoft has to admit Wii is winning.
Microsoft has sold 10 million Xbox 360 consoles in the US and reached 19 million sales worldwide, the platform holder announced yesterday evening. Xbox Live now has a membership of over 12 million.
Don Mattrick, senior vice president of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business and Devices Division, said the console was "leading the charge in the US and abroad".
He also implied that Xbox 360 would win the console war with Sony overall, adding that, "History has shown us that the first company to reach 10 million in console sales wins the generation battle."
However, Microsoft representatives were forced to issue an embarrassing clarification after Kotaku questioned a claim in the first line of the company's press release that it was "the first current-generation gaming console to break the 10 million mark in the US".
It turns out that the company meant to say "current gen high definition console", rather than current generation console, because, as anyone who read Nintendo's financials knows, the Wii has already hit 10.6 million units in the US as part of a worldwide installed base of 24.45 million.
(Update, 16th May 7.54am: Nintendo subsequently issued a release on Thursday claiming it had reached 9.5 million US sales according to NPD data, suggesting we've made an error! Checking Nintendo's consolidated financials, under "Sales Units in Ten Thousands" in the "Life-to-Date Mar. 08" column it claims "1,061" for "The Americas" - and "The Americas" rather than "US" is probably key to our mistake. Basically, we reckon it's Canada's fault. Apologies. Microsoft does indeed win.)
The announcement also comes just a week after Sony claimed PS3 was outselling 360 in Europe, and a day after Microsoft's great rival said it had reached 12.81 million units sold since its November 2006 launch.
Xbox 360 launched around the world in November 2005, and had sold 11 million by April 2007, before hitting 17.7 million by January 2008.
Yesterday Microsoft also reiterated its claim to one of the highest software attach-rates (the amount of software sold per console owner) in the industry - Don Mattrick's colleague John Schappert having told us at the Game Developers Conference that it stood at "7 games purchased per console".