The December NPD results are in and Xbox 360 highlights include:

• December ’08 was the biggest month for Xbox 360 in history
• In the all-important holiday quarter, Xbox 360 outsold PS3 by more than 2:1

Despite a decline in overall consumer spending during the holidays, video games continued to shine as a bright spot, with Xbox 360 registering record-setting numbers in December, selling 1.4 million consoles in the U.S. (December NPD data).

Not only did the Xbox 360 see its weekly sales run rate increase 38 percent compared to November, it also continued to outperform the PS3 by two-to-one for the third month in a row (December NPD data).

With third-party game sales for Xbox 360 increasing from $298 million in November to $504 million in December, it’s no surprise that Xbox 360 has generated more life-to-date dollars at retail for third-party publishers than the PS3 and Wii combined.  Gears of War 2, Call of Duty: World at War, Grand Theft Auto IV, Madden NFL 09, Left 4 Dead and the critically acclaimed Fable II were some of the hottest Xbox 360 games in 2008.  Three Xbox 360 games appeared on the top 10 list in December, including Call of Duty: World at War, Left 4 Dead and Gears of War 2. (December NPD data)

“Our goal for 2008 was to reach new audiences by bringing ground-breaking games and entertainment to Xbox 360,” said Don Mattrick, senior vice president of the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft.  “Looking forward, new waves of innovation will extend our position as the global leader in interactive entertainment.”

As announced by Microsoft last week, Xbox LIVE continues to experience rapid growth; online transactions over Xbox LIVE grew 84 percent in 2008 over 2007.  More than 40 million downloads took place through the LIVE Marketplace in December alone (Microsoft internal data). With consumer appetite for immediate online entertainment growing exponentially, Xbox LIVE is poised for another great year in 2009.

Xbox 360 Highlights for 2008

• Global life-to-date console sales rise to 28 million (Microsoft internal data)
• Lead over PS3 grows to eight million globally, approximately seven million in the U.S., one million in Europe (Microsoft internal data)
• Total life-to-date consumer spending on Xbox 360 reaches an industry-leading $13.2 billion of the current-gen consoles ($10.8 billion for Wii, $6.1 billion for PS3) (December NPD data)
• 8.1 games are sold per console for Xbox 360, more than any other next generation console (December NPD data) (Not sure if this included XBLA downloads or only retail)
• Xbox LIVE saw 70 percent membership growth in ’08. That’s a rate of one person every five seconds, making the community 17 million active members strong (Microsoft internal data)
• Xbox LIVE set a new online record of 1.5 million concurrent players during a one-week period (Microsoft internal data)
• Total hours spent on Xbox LIVE climbs to 10 billion hours since launch (Microsoft internal data)