Major Nelson's collected some glowing sales stats for the Xbox, along with comparison points for the PlayStation 2. Among them are the fact that the Xbox increased its market share from 24% in 2003 to 37% in 2004, compared to the PlayStation 2's drop from 51% to 45% over the same period, and that Xbox software sales increased 77% year over year, compared to only 1% for the PlayStation 2. Of course, numbers like these also can prompt one to think.

It really is necessary to read between the lines when one sees numbers like this. Don't get me wrong; I own an Xbox and I have an XBL subscription; I don't own another console and I haven't since the Atari 2600.

In addition, the Xbox's sales performance in the past year is commendable. One still has to recognize, however, that the PS2's worldwide base is something on the order of 300% larger than the Xbox's, and that the cited progress does little to reverse that. Because it was released earlier, the PS2 is now very long in the tooth, but despite that, developers for the console still managed to sell more games for it in 2004 than in 2003, even if only 1% more. This is a testament to that platform's enviable longevity and utter dominance in the market, not to mention the daunting scope of the task that Microsoft is setting itself for the next round. But nobody should be kidding ourselves: this round of the console wars is over and has been for some time now. These sales figures occur during, if I may employ a sports analogy, "garbage time". One could argue that this shows momentum in the Xbox camp, but unless the next console is backwards compatible, everybody is going to have to buy everything over again, so there won't be a possibility for that momentum to carry over to the next iteration.

There is also the halo effect to consider-- or, in this case, the Halo 2 effect. The massive sales of Halo 2 had to drive at least some of the Xbox sales in the latter part of 2004; people who bought an Xbox to play Halo and Halo 2 to figure out what all the fuss is, people who replaced an old Xbox that broke, or people that bought a second box... just because. In other words, while selling those Xboxes might be good for Microsoft, it doesn't necessarily indicate that this is a trend that's going to carry forward, or that Microsoft is expanding its consumer base.

Just a pinch of salt on Xbox sales figures from a dedicated Bungie fan.