Ok, I guess 2 people still in denial.  You do realize Ballmer said over 66 million sold?  Was he right about that?  Nope.  Also, he said #1 in HW throughout the world, while taking about the 360 and Kinect.  So it seems he was including Kinect in with their HW.  Besides, Sony has won the past 2 years and to my knowledge have said jack all about it, so why would this year be any different?  Then, of course, you have the other sales charts that have been released that don't back up a 360 victory.  Look, even Seece conceded that if Sony doesn't report unexpectedly low numbers in their shipments, they truly won. 

Sony says the say thing all the time. You think anyone believe them? They also said gamers would get 2nd jobs just to buy their overpriced $600 PS3. Yup, they're real smart. ;)

THIS. Sony has never "touted their own horn" the last 2 years they won. Why would they start now?

How are we in denial? The numbers point to MS/360 being the winner here. Until Sony comes out with their shipment figures and we get some firm numbers on how many are actually on store shelves, it looks much more likely that the 360 won here.

Sony, Y U NO SAY SOMETHING!?

You know what? About sell-through, for every company, except before Xmas, when retailers often play safe and restock best seller products far before being close to sell out, for every company we can say that when they do a new shipment, the previous one is probably close to be sold out, and we can only be sure almost at 100% only that the second to last shipment and the previous ones are completely sold out. We cannot have any other certainty about sales to end users, just estimates. Certainties about the second to last Xmas shipment are even scarcer for best seller products, as any retailer will prefer to sell the excess during clearance sales that risking shortages.
About Ballmer, boasting is his style, he likes to look strong, make fans proud and scare competitors, only he can do it and still be somehow liked even by most of his enemies, you can hate Ballmer because he's scary and when he becomes too powerful he's a danger for a fair and competitive market, but you can't really hate him, he just oozes both intentional and unintentional humour, but nobody else at MS (and almost nobody else in other companies) can safely behave the same, Greenberg, for example, tried to be a bully and a turd like him, but it didn't work, everyone and his dog was hating him and he eventually had to become a nice and polite guy.

Your're in denial because all numbers we have so far point to Sony winning in actual sales, while it looks like MS may have won in shipments.  Remember, though, there claim (and the countless threads on VGC) were about sales, not shipments.

How come it says "Install base 65.8m" on the article?

go and ask microsoft. they've been coming out with all sorts recently