Xbox 360 hits 30 million units sold, 20 million on LIVE

Microsoft announced today that sales of the Xbox 360 console have passed the 30 million mark globally, with the Xbox LIVE community swelling to more than 20 million active members. They also boasted that Xbox 360 achieved the highest percentage growth in hardware sales of any console so far in 2009, up 28 percent over the previous year.

Microsoft’s press release spouted some more stats to underline their success, most notably that gamers have downloaded nearly 1 billion pieces of content from the Xbox LIVE Marketplace, and that US consumers alone have spent $14.5billion on the Xbox 360 at retail.

The software giant also said that “Xbox 360 continues to be the platform of choice for the industry’s top games, generating $5.9 billion in sales to date at U.S. retail for third-party publishers, which is more than those of other current-generation consoles combined. Xbox 360 also leads current-generation consoles in game purchases, with consumers owning an average of 8.3 titles each.” Now where did I put that third of a DVD?

Apparently Xbox LIVE activity has experienced a surge since the launch of the New Xbox Experience in November 2008. Since that time, the community has recorded a 136 percent increase in new members, TV and movie downloads have more than doubled, and purchases of games, Game Add-ons and more on Xbox LIVE Arcade have increased by 70 percent.

Microsoft also added the dubious ‘fact’ that Xbox LIVE is now in more homes than any satellite television provider, which doesn’t seem very plausible. The last time MS mentioned the number of LIVE members was back at the start of January, at which time there were 17 million. So, three million new Gold and Silver members in less than 5 months isn’t bad, but as always Microsoft are reluctant to reveal how many of those are actual paying Gold subscribers.

In comparison, the Playstation 3 has sold around 22 million units, while the Wii is far ahead topping 50 million units sold.