For reading, and discussion:

http://majornelson.com/archive/2010/10/29/1-billion-entertainment-hours-spent-on-xbox-live-every-month.aspx

Well we just had the shipment numbers so I'm going to have to assume that he's quoting an old number. 

Already posted, besides Microsoft just yesterday announced Total Xbox 360 shipments are at 44.5 million. VGC has 43.6 million 360s sold at the end of October. 1 million on store shelves, being shipped to retailers is what it has been in the past.

I sincerely doubt he's wrong.  He's an official MS mouthpiece, and MS isn't going to shortchange themselves by handing out low numbers.

This was posted only a little while ago, today.

I would say that the actual number could be as high as 42.49M, and they might still say "42M", but that still puts VGC numbers about 1.5M off.

Major Nelson was talking sold, not shipped.  And I see the VGC current 360 number, supposedly the "sold" number, not even at the end of Oct.  being at 43.9M.  Is my browser busted?

EDIT: just now it got updated... 44.2M!

Underneath the "worldwide totals" graph, is the following text:

I made a typo, meant to say 43.6 million. Here is the link for the week ending October 2. You can go here and here for Microsoft's numbers. You can do a quick search for news about 360 sales the last couple of days and see tons that state 44.5 million, not the 42 million stated by Major Nelson.

So what ?? If there´s 2M Xbox in shelves there´s also 2M or more Ps3,

Why is the number 43.6m at those links, but on the front page the number is 44.2m? Have they adjusted 360 down?

I think you mean 44.6m. Those numbers are shipped. When MS, Sony, Nintendo refer to sold consoles, they mean sold to retailers, not sold to consumers. The 44.6m is total shipped numbers at the end of September. VGChartz tracks sold to consumers and we have the 360 sales at 43.6m at the end of September. That means there are 1 million 360s on store shelves, or are on their way to retailers.

There are actually 1 million 360s on store shelves. About the PS3, Sony stated they have shipped 41.6m PS3s by the end of September. VGChartz has PS3's sold to consumers at 39.5m, leaving 1.1m on store shelves. That is the same number for both consoles at retailers.

Here is the link if you want to know where I am getting the VGChartz numbers. This is sales for the week ending October 2nd. At the right look at Worldwide Hardware then look at the 'Total' column.

I hope this helped.