Xbox 360 sales top 8 million in Europe

Who cares, Wii will own everything. Unfortunately for me.

@Hvac0120 totally agreed. and also wii games cannot be ported to anything out there. it offers a unique experience like no others. havent played with mine in awhile too

to add to what Draaagoon said about the Wii: A lot of the older people see the Wii as a family-fun device. It's a system that offers TONS of E and E10+ rated games that are good for the entire family. It also offers some deep and enjoyable experiences through games like Zelda and Mario Galaxy. I've heard at least 3 people over the age of 40 here at work talk about how much they enjoy Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on the Wii. The Wii seems silly to young, "hardcore" gamers. That may be because these type of people have been brought up with Halo and GTA and Call of Duty...et cetera. They don't see the value that the Wii has to a typical family. The Wii is the Rock Band/Guitar Hero of consoles. It's the console for everyone and anyone. It's the console that people can get around and play together without the need to go online, but with the option available if they so choose. There are plenty of things that are wrong with the Wii and it is my least-played console (I own all 3 major consoles). However, nobody can deny that the Wii offers a unique experience that has taken the world over. Those sales aren't made buy idiots who don't know any better. They are people who know what they're getting into. What are they getting into, you ask? -- A lot of fun games that they can play with friends and family. That's what.

@ Media Mind I do not understand why people always feel the need to bring the 360 because it gains recognition of success. You wonder how many red rings they got. Why don't we all ask how many exclusives the PS3 will get this year? There are problems with both consoles, I wonder how many people will not get RRoD and enjoy it as a great console with great games. The 360 maybe slightly unreliable (I have owned 2 since release, swapped first on for a later HDMI console) but it is also very well priced and has the widest selection of games. Why would it not be successful? @ Cl0ud The Wii sucks so bad it's still outselling both the 360 and PS3 and obviously all the people that keep buying them must be shouting from the rooftops about how bad the Wii is! No, I think not. It does not sell well because adults buy into the hype, they buy because it is an excellent console that offers plenty of fun games to play as a group, and it's more active than just sitting around with a pad in your hand playing an FPS online. I would agree with gudni that the Wii does seem to be a popular choice for a more mature crowd. Not necessarily to play daily like most gamers but it's a fun party piece to bring out on occasion.

ps3 will catch up to xbox this year

good for Europe, I wonder how many red rings they got...

yeah the wii sucks. the only reason adults talk about it is cause they easily give into the hype and are fooled by games like wii fit. also they dont care about online play

Good work Microsoft...well actually i have no love for a company like Microsoft, but the price is right and the games are there,so instead of the PS3, the 360 is getting a seat next to the Wii. (Please nobody comment that the Wii sucks and is for kids... Yes we know you are probably a teen, and you feel adult playing M rated games. But as an adult gamer(30+) and on behalf of all adult gamers that have also gotten annoyed with you website dominating kids, i would like to tell you that if you hung out with grown ups you would know that the Wii is the most talked about and popular console.)

I hate to say it but the struggling PS3 has proving me wrong and became a major player even if it was thanks to Kojima at Konami with MGS4 but I dont see it doing better any other year then it did last year no mater how good Killzone2 and GodofWar3 neither can match the popularity of MGS4 and the poor economy will have third party developers saying lets make a game on a higher selling console instead of trying to compete with the many PS3 and multi-platform games that have bloated budgets.

The PS3 is going to really struggle now that Blu Ray players can be bought for a mere third of the price of a PS3. Now that the "Well PS3 has 'cheap' Blu Ray drive" excuse has evaporated, there are but a child's handful of good, well thought out reasons for getting one at all any more. I mean, MGS4 might be the consoles 'triumph game', but i don't see it doing even half a Halo 3 release. This news from Microsoft is awesome, but it really doesn't surprise me at all ;)

oh by the way that wasnt a sony fanboy comment it was a gaming fanboy comment as in i want all the consoles so i can play computer games and rock so hard

ok if anyone truely liked games you should not want either console to fail, you should just wish for awesome games, i dont own a ps3 but this year overall i've felt that the ps3 has had more exclusives worth looking at

The xbox is the cheapest console over here in the uk and when it comes down to it in terms of games it is an awesome machine. £300 is way to much for a ps 3 espcally when you look at it in terms of games the xbox 360 has nearly all the ps3s best games plus its own games like gears and halo that won't go on ps3 so it makes sense to buy an xbox. ps 3 might have blu ray but at the end of the day you should buy a console to play games not watch flims. flim play back should be looked at as an bonus.

@ BusterKirk You should destroy your pos3. Its only good to watch bluray movies again and again ... The X360 OWNS in everyway just like Gears 2 !!! LOCK & LOAD !!!

Go figure, sales increase once the price point reaches what people are willing to spend on a gaming diversion...

I've had a 360 since launch and bought a PS3 mainly for the excellent reviews of its Blu-Ray player. And that it was a super machine which I assumed would give me access to exclusive games going forward. The difference between the graphical capacilities of both machines... the PS3 has disappointed me with games like Resistance 2 which have piss-poor graphics in most of the levels. It was like playing an Xbox game until the fifth level where the frame rate and lighting suddenly step up, before lowering again. Gabe Newall from Valve, of Half Life fame, said the PS3 was horrible to program for and an insult. We're also now finding out that games like the latest LOTR will only allow two-player co-op on PS3 but FOUR on 360. I am amazed that Sony are still the market leaders, the 360 is an amazing machine which offers high-def gaming at a budget price and has superior titles. A 360 has all the games you'll get on PC if you can't afford to upgrade. The machine owns and so far are easily winning the battle against Sony. I really hope Sony step up and give me my moneys worth. If it wasn't for the Blu-Ray player I wouldn't touch it.

yeah still allot of people only just making the transition from the last generation of consoles, oh how i do love my 360.

I had RROD on my 360 but within 5 days I had a replacement sent by Microsoft. I live in the UK where console manufacturers are famously neglectful but Microsoft's service was exceptional. I'm glad the 360 is doing well, especially in Europe, as it seems they value Europe as a market, which sadly some Japanese manufacturer (rhymes with pony lol) overlooks to their detriment. I think this festive season gone is very telling as it's the first festive battle of the current generation where all three contenders are now fully established. Many gamers have been hanging on the fence to see which next-gen console to buy. After seeing that Sony are unwilling to back their system with pre-christmas price cuts, they realise that the 360 is the console that will get most third-party support. 360 Price points are very attractive and it is unsurprising they have sold well. This year we may well see more Sony exclusives go multi-platform or 360 exclusive because of Microsoft's and Nintendo's increasing dominance of the market.

Europe is a real battleground for Microsoft, Americans might take some sort of pride in supporting ''their'' console but the Europeans (like myself) it really comes down to what console seems the best.360 had a rough start with all the negative news about console failures and back in 2005 Europe was a real playstation zone. I think Sony will beat them in Europe before 2010 but Microsoft build up some credit among European gamers due to the exclusives and low prices. If the next xbox doesn't have the launch issues of the 360 then Sony will be in for a real tough fight. They already lost the US to the 360 and they lost Japan to Nintendo so I'm really interesting to see what their next console is going to be like.

why is it that microsoft is making more money than ever

Not bad going 3 years after its initial release.

Lol why would you buy a wii its for little kids

@ Hvac0120 Yeah, not worth getting into the techno stuff. I don't feel like digging stuff up to support my argument, been through that before and it doesn't solve anything. Honestly, I wanted the PS3 to be great. But no way am I dropping $400 to play Drakes Fortune. (I hate MGS. Like being force fed some weird philosophy through long boring cutscenes) Other than that not much else is worth the investment to me. I still lay some credibility to what Gabe Newell of Valve said of the PS3 hardware upon having spent some time with it. "The PS3 is a total disaster on so many levels..." I am inclined to believe he didn't just make that up to make Sony mad. I am certain he says what many devs wish they could say but are too afraid of being barred from Sony. Here it is in a nutshell. PS3 costs twice as much as 360. It is definitely not twice as good and perhaps not even up to same level in may reviewer's eyes, at least to this point. This is why PS3 is losing.

Hvac: spot on. I just wish developers would hurry up and release some of these games. I think the graphics/game engines in Killzone 2 and God of War are going to speak for themselves.

@Hvac0120 who says "To add to that: the development tools are getting better and better, which will allow developers to get more out of the PS3. Whereas the Xbox 360 has already had games that are utilizing a large percent of the available power" i always have a problem with the assumption that only the ps3 has all this untapped power and the 360 is almost maxed out. dont go into specs cause ill be lost there, but from what ive seen and read, the 360 and ps3 are about equal except for extra power in cell for calculations for games that need it and devs who can take advantage of it. that should give ps3 an advantage in the long term, but not by much imo. and just as there are games which are utilizing a large percent of the available power on the 360, the same is true for the ps3, but devs will always find ways to get more out of the hardware. how much more devs can get out of each console depends on time, money, dev skill, manpower, experience etc as much as any untapped power within the consoles, and so we just have to see what happens in future.

WHAT EVER you can read into anything you want and you can make it what ever you want it to be WHO CARES!!

That Microsoft outsold Sony during Holiday 08 is a fact, but what about their "fastest-growing statement"? What do you think of that? This is IMHO a rather irrelevant spin on the numbers, since you can also get a 100% sales increase if you sold 1 machine in 07 and 2 in 08. And if we look at the total numbers, this "fact" is rather a poor choice to claim some kind of victory over Wii. Shame on you, MS ;-)

@warlok9 The BD drive doesn't need to be any faster. The transfer rate is fine. The pipeline for the GPU...haven't heard any problems with that, but you should take into consideration that the SPU's are taking a huge load off of the GPU in the PS3, therefore cutting down the amount of processing required for the GPU. This is going to be your word against mine and I have to get back to work (at lunch) so I'm not going to search for resources. Feel free to argue this with anybody else. The framerates aren't a problem with games that are developed correctly and really there haven't been many problems over the past year with multiplatform games. If you want an example, just look at what Uncharted 2 is aiming to achieve. We are getting to the point where developers are more knowledgable of how to program for the unique architecture of the PS3 and where they are going to begin taking advantage of the additional power. To add to that: the development tools are getting better and better, which will allow developers to get more out of the PS3. Whereas the Xbox 360 has already had games that are utilizing a large percent of the available power. I'm not saying that PS3 games are better or that they ever will be. I'm simply stating that the technology in the PS3 is more powerful than what's in the Xbox360. When it comes to specs, you can't argue. Developers can use the hardware the wrong way and what you see is not the limit of the hardware, but the limit of the skills from the people who develop for it.

@xbox4life76 Actually the 360 is $50 less than the Wii. Wii = $249, 360 = $199 Please Sonyites, don't go on about all the stuff you need to buy for the 360 that actually makes it more expensive. Last time I checked you needed to buy a nunchuk right from the getgo on the Wii. the thing doesn't even come with a "complete" controller. Bottom line: for $199 you are playing GOW2 in Hi Def. Right out of the box.

@ Hvac0120 Hmmm, actually every non biased report I have read from people with any knowledge on the subject (not Newsweek!) have reported the opposite. 360 is more powerful for making games run. Not getting into any techno babble cause I don't know what it all means, but it has been stated from the get go that the PS3 has 2 major bottlenecks: one being the read speed from the BR drive and the other being the narrow pipeline from the ram to the graphics board. Makes sense since a lot of devs are having a hard time with framerates on the PS3. Cmon though, we are into year 3 for the PS3. (year 4 of game development) When are they going to tap into all this "hidden" power the PS3 has? And what are you talking about with the "human potential" thing. It's a simple analogy man... I can make a million others... how about this one: I build a car that I tell everyone is going to be the fastest production car in the world. 3 years later I still haven't won a single race! (where any other cars were involved anyway). I've been through about 30 drivers too and none can get this thing moving. Maybe my car isn't the fastest?

@easpley who says "Why OH WHY does Microsoft feel the need to Constantly blow their own trumpet" why OH WHY do some gamers see what they want to see? did you not read the links in my last post? microsoft are not doing anything different to sony or nintendo or any other company. but i do have to wonder why it should upset you. "WHO CARES!!" you care, cause if you didnt, you wouldnt have posted a comment here.

WHO CARES!!

Sry for the wall of text, game spot removes my paragraphs for some reason :P

Sony were fools, they didn't properly secure third party games or first party property to exploit. Hvac is right about the superior tech but its completly useless because most good Ps3 games are imports of 360 so they are actually worse than their 360 counterparts which is just hillarious, all this power and tech going to waste. The irony is this is exactly why playstation beat the technologically superior N64. It was soooo much easier to develop an advanced game for PSX than N64 that N64 had lackluster thirdparty support whereas PSX had literally thousands of games. Blue Ray is a saving grace because its the only reason I see people buy Ps3. Ya the exclusive games are crappier than 360, and the multi platform games tend to look better on 360 buuuuut I get a blue ray player (which is already expensive as hell to buy seperately) plus the advantage of a few good exclusives. Without blue ray this would be a bigger slaughter or imagine if HD DVD won lol

I love these 360vsPS3 boards mainly to laugh at people who just say whatever comes to their heads and don't even think about what they are actualy saying. Some funny quotes from... let's say idiots: "Maybe Microsoft has an inferiority complex" (let's see biggest company in the world... maybe). "Ps3 is still outselling the 360 in europe" (did you even read the news before posting that). Refering to the PS3 "slightly visually superior multiplatform games" (i think you got that backwards). "Because it doesn't make sense to me that a console that (I) believe to be superior does not sell as well as one (I) believe to be inferior".(i believe i'll win the lotto but it hasn't happened). Just some funny stuff that made me laugh, anyway, i hope the PS3 does better and catches up to the 360 so we can have a proper console war, console wars mean that great games come out and we, as gamers, are the ones that win in the end!!

Why OH WHY does Microsoft feel the need to Constantly blow their own trumpet it reeks of insecurity and is embarrassing, and NO i am NOT a Sony fan boy, nor a Nintendo fan boy i have more sense.

i wonder how many of those have been returned because of hardware failure as i have had mine for 2 years and i am on my 4th one

With the price of the 360 nearing the price of the Wii, that doesn't surprise me that microsoft sold out sony...but i've just noticed that many non gamers are more enticed by the wii then the 360 hence why the wii is winning in overall sales. All in all, the price of a console is considerably cheaper because of the competition and myself being a consumer, am very happy about this...

@ warlok9 Technically, the PS3 is a more powerful machine. I'm not a hardware guy, but if you read around the web and ask professionals to compare the specs of both the 360 and the PS3, you will find that the PS3 has more potential. Just because that potential has not been tapped does not mean it's not there. Being the fastest runner depends on human restraints such as fitness and weather conditions and such and this title can change. The PS3 and the Xbox 360 hardware is set in stone. They may move from 65nm to 45nm chips and make other small changes that improve cost, but it will not change performance. When it comes to performance, the PS3 has the upper-hand.

The PS3 outsold the Xbox360 throughout 2008 until the price drop. However, the PS3 only outsold the Xbox360 by a little. The price drop was a smart move by Microsoft because they knew that Sony couldn't drop the price of the PS3 any more than they already have. This gave Microsoft an increase in console sales, which in turn increases their software sales and makes up for the lack of profits off the console hardware. Sony has an amazing machine on the market. They just put it out there at a bad time. They should have saved the Cell technology for the PS4 and used parts that were already, readily available and at a cheap cost so that they could go toe-to-toe with Microsoft on cost. I think Blu-ray was important to the PS3 strategy and I'm glad they kept that in. The price difference would be much less, though, had they not gone with the Cell. It will be interesting to see how the competition goes with the PS4 and the Xbox 1080 in 2015. I bet the prices will be more inline with each other. The Wii is a really strange phenomenon. If soccer moms like the system, the system will sell. I like my Wii and the games I have, but I just don't get how the system is selling so well. It's a fad that just won't fade away. Nintendo hit a sweet spot with this console and it's helping them regain their title as #1 console manufacturer. I'm really curious if they will build a more competitive system for the next round or if they'll try their luck with another less is more console....

hey killkill3, Gamespot said this next bit of text NOT microsoft: "a figure it claims is more than 1 million greater than archrival Sony's PlayStation 3" Apart from the fact it would be totally pointless for microsoft to do a live and completely publicized face rubbing on Sony's posterior as it would make microsoft look like a bully and just very, very spoiled.

Why should we all assume the PS3 is by far the most powerful of all the consoles? I can go around claiming I am the fastest runner in the land, but until I actually win a race why should anyone believe I am the fastest? Oh that's right, you'll just take my word for it Sony fanboys.

WII is for casual gamers and Nintendo fans, PS3 is basicly a Blu-ray player with some games as for 360 it is truly for the hardcore gamers. Sony won last gen with the PS2 but this gen they messed up.

@killkill3 who wrote "When PS3 beat the Xbox 360 from june to september Sony didn't go around telling everybody how awesome they were" you very selective in your reading; http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/five-million-ps3s-sold-in-europe-says-sony http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7386879.stm http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/ps3-outsells-xbox-360-in-q2-worldwide whenever sony feel they sold more than 360, they shout it from the rooftops. theres nothing wrong with that, thats what they should do as a company, and thats what you expect microsoft to do to when their sales are better. seems youre overly sensitive to the 360 outselling ps3. anything you want to tell us? ;-)

killkill3 Sorry to point out your wrong, but you are. When the PS3 had strong, Sony made sure to point it out and the Wii does this also. When a company has strong numbers, people who own that product actually like to hear how they plan continue this success and what they did to get there. When you read this it may have upset you because you own another product and you are too deep in the fan war. Take a deep breath and remember the PS3 will still get great games to play too.

I truly don't believe Wii is in the same category as PS3 and 360. Sure, it is selling boatloads, but is not nearly as graphically advanced or powerful as the PS3 or 360. Multiplatform games look 200 - 300% worse on the Wii. In ALL cases the Wii version will is dumbed down (levels removed, graphics simplified). I have also found, while the Wii-motes are a cool design when properly implemented, playing platform, action and Pro sports (EA titles) games with the Wii-mote is very annoying. The designers shoe-horn the Wii-mote motion control into games it has no business of being in. The Wii's ability to push polygons is actually worse than some suspect. Some have mentioned that the Wii is better graphically than original Xbox. I am going on record here stating that the Wii is nowhere near as powerful as the original Xbox. I still play some on my old Xbox, and I gotta say, alot of those games look great! Far Cry for example... no way I can see that running on the Wii looking this good. I can go on naming all kinds of original Xbox games that look alot better than most of the Wii game out there. The only exception would be SOME of Nintendo's 1st party Wii games look pretty decent. (Zelda, Mario, etc) And many people forget that the original Xbox is capable of running in Hi Def. A ton of games run at a native 720p or 1080i, and just about all games run at a minimum of 480p (which the Xbox would upscale to 720p or 1080i). Additionally ALL original Xbox games have Dolby 5.1 sound and it also is a nice DVD player. This is starting to sound like an ad for the ole Xbox! Sorry, didn't mean to do that. But there are alot of things that ole Xbox can do that people don't know about! (the Hi Def capabilties for example) Anyway, the bottom line I am getting at is this... I do not think that anyone having the intention to buy a 360 or PS3 is going to settle for a Wii instead. But they might, like I did, buy a Wii in addition to their 360/PS3 purchase. On the other hand, someone having the intention of buying a Wii, will unlikely be swayed into purchasing a 360/PS3 instead of OR in addition to their Wii purchase. This is why Wii is leading the "race" as it were. For many it is the only console, but for many more, it is a second console to the PS3 or 360.

@teknicz Don't forget all of the people that are rocket scientists. You know. The ones that say "Trust me, I would know about _____". lol

"a figure it claims is more than 1 million greater than archrival Sony's PlayStation 3" Why oh why does Microsoft ALWAYS have to prance around telling everybody that it beat the competition like some annoying nerdy kid. When PS3 beat the Xbox 360 from june to september Sony didn't go around telling everybody how awesome they were and Nintendo never compares itself to the competition even though they are crushing it. Maybe Microsoft has an inferiority complex because they know they are the ones with the inferior product.

Apparently everyone in these comments are analysts or market specialists in here. I never knew that I was surrounded by such esteemed members of society.

AngelsongCA stop pretending to be some fortune teller, you are lame