Microsoft announceed that the Xbox brand has had its most successful holiday season ever in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA territories in Marketing Speak). The Xbox 360 has sold more than 8 million units overall, in this particular area, and leads the Playstation 3 in terms of selling by more than a million units. Worldwide, the console has now surpassed the 28 million unit mark.

But this is not the only happy news to Microsoft. Also, the activce members of the service Xbox Live has expanded from 14 million users to more than 17 million users. Those 17 million are said to have spent more than $1 billion on Xbox Live since 2005.

Microsoft thinks that this huge success is based on their lately released New Xbox Experience (NXE), which brings customers not only a newly modelled interface menu, but also allows them to create their own avatar.
However, an even more important reason could be the huge drop in price of 2008, which made the Xbox 360 the cheapest console on the market. The newly won customers are likely to have signed in on Xbox Live, too.

GfK-ChartTrack data indicates that the 360 was the fastest growing console in terms of sales in 2008. The system´s sales increased by more than 100 percent if compared to the same time period in 2007.

Founding Analyst of Games Investor Consulting Nick Gibson had the following to say: