American software giant Microsoft Corp. may currently be engaged in a game of catch-up with Nintendo as it attempts to claw back the unit sales market advantage the Wii currently holds over the Xbox 360, but that doesn’t mean Microsoft won’t still blow its own hardware trumpet wherever possible.
Microsoft lauds Xbox 360 as it moves past original Xbox\'s sales performance in NA. Image: Microsoft.
Specifically, official North American market data delivered by the NPD Group shows that the Xbox 360 videogame console has moved past the 10 million unit sales marker in 30 months.
Microsoft is proudly holding this performance aloft as a measure of the Xbox 360’s popularity when compared to the original Xbox, which required 36 months to reach the same sales landmark across the region.
However, while worth applauding in terms of a 20 percent generation-based point of progress, if Redmond-based Microsoft does not improve upon that growth it will have sold somewhere in the region of 28.8 million Xbox 360 consoles by the time it equals the Xbox’s life cycle of roughly four and a half years.
That’s a figure that falls significantly short of the 125 million consoles sold by Sony Corp’s previous generation winner the PlayStation 2.
It’s also worth noting that while Microsoft’s now-established videogame traction and the current tail end market placement of the PlayStation 3 leave this particular generation fight as a much more uncertain battle, a massively resurgent Nintendo is likely to play a huge part in deciding which hardware platform emerges victorious.
Moreover, since its launch in November of 2005, the Xbox 360 has built a worldwide user base of around 19 million -- all-but failing to make an impression across Japan in the process -- while the Nintendo Wii has stormed the global market and thus far racked up approximately 24 million units sales despite being released to retail a full year after the Xbox 360.
In terms of reaching 10 million sales in North America, Nintendo’s current monthly sales figures for the region (approx. 500,000 units) will see the demographic-busting Wii move beyond the Xbox 360’s milestone within the next eight weeks -- which equates to around 20 months as opposed to Microsoft’s lauded 30.
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