There is so much fail in this post...

Nitpicking at its finest.

then, if you got what i meant you shouldn't ask to elaborate - that would only make you seem hypocritical 

>User was moderated for this post [RH]

Great milestone to hit, I remember when people were predicting the 360 to have a LTD of 40 million and its successor to be out by now. I think 80 million should be easy and 90 is a fair chance by 2015 (100 million is not possible for the 360 imo).

That's actually pretty crazy. MS have done a tremendous job of getting support, fixing hardware issues and snagging massive chunks of the market. All in all, they seem like they're best set for the next generation out of all three.

Congrats and keep it up, x-box!

70m now and probably 80m+ lifetime is pretty impressive.  They really put the resources and funding into the Xbox project necessary to make it a success.  That it continued to sell well even after a major hardware fiasco is even more impressive, and I think shows just how invested Microsoft was in the 360.  I think a lot of people thought the Xbox brand would be a secondary product line for Microsoft but obviously it is not.

However, I don't really see any reason to think Microsoft is in the best position.  Despite what a lot of people think, market share does not, for the most part, carry over from one generation to the next.  Ask Sony, Nintendo, and Atari.  Though the next Xbox is a strong brand in North America, it's the weakest of the three globally.  The 360 had by far the lowest sales rate of the three major consoles, and the lowest installed base, despite having a full year's lead on the others and having spent a large amount on marketing and limited exclusives.

From my perspective, the Xbox brand is the most dependent on 3rd party games, which is why I think launching before its competition is very important.  It's always going to have the weakest launch line-up, unless Microsoft goes back to buying one year exclusives at the start of next gen or they have a Halo ready to go out the gates.  I'm not convinced the next Xbox won't finish third in sales rate once more next generation.

Now that I'm realizing how high up each of the three consoles are, I start to understand why we see such low sales despite continued support and great games. We truly have reached saturation of people who want to play video games.

Its kinda funny the amount of people yelling "shipped not sold"

You guys do realize MS gets their cash when they ship a console not when its sold to a consumer. All that matters to MS is shipped numbers

That is correct, but we don't really care about the financial situation of the big three in terms of whether the float the cost or not.

The point of VGC is to track how many people actually buy consoles and handhelds from retailers.

Although I agree he's formed a biased conclusion by strictly pointing at evidence that confirms his agenda, I'd like to see a breakdown of sales of multiplats compared to the install base per region. I've been thinking for a while now that the 14m lead the 360 has in NA isn't really translating into much higher sales in line with the much higher installbase, but I may well be wrong.

That is all that matters to MS, and surely they will get 70m sold if they shipped it, but VGC does not really care how much money MS, Sony, Nintendo make.