Granted, outselling the original Xbox is not exactly an achievement that is hard to surpass (different if we’re talking about the Sony PS2), but Microsoft has managed to outsold its old console with the Xbox 360. Relatively speaking, that is an achievement by itself. Official NPD data that tracks North American console sales has released its findings, stating that the Xbox 360 took 30 months to reach the 10 million units sold milestone. This period of time, in contrast with the original Xbox, is 20% faster. Whoop-dee-do - unfortunately, the Xbox 360 doesn’t look to do well in other regional markets as it still lags far behind the Wii and PS3 in Japan, and doesn’t look set to break into the Japanese market until perhaps the Xbox 720 comes out, if ever.

This improvement doesn’t really add weight to Don Mattrick’s assertion that “history has shown us that the first company to reach 10 million in console sales wins the generation battle.” I highly doubt that history will repeat itself this time around, as the Xbox 360 is slowly but surely losing ground to the PS3 and Wii even in the US. Should one take current sales velocity and history into consideration, then to say that the Xbox 360 will hit the PS2’s 125 million units sold would take a whole lot of time and blunders on the competition’s part in order for this to happen. In contrast, you don’t see Nintendo trumpeting their phenomenal Wii sales that has moved 24 million units worldwide after a mere 18 months, and this figure is made ever more startling as it was released a whole year later than the Xbox 360.

I find this round of battle to be the most balanced thus far, and us gamers are the main beneficiaries from it.

Source: PC World

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