As a part of its earnings report for its first quarter, software biggie Microsoft recently revealed that the sales of its hugely popular Xbox 360 gaming console had surpassed the `70 million units sold' landmark.

However, along with reporting the new Xbox 360 milestone, Microsoft also acknowledged in its earnings report that its first-quarter sales of the console had witnessed a year-on-year plunge of 600,000 units, with the quarterly sales figure being 1.7 million units.

Despite the fall in the hardware sales during the reporting quarter, which incidentally saw a decline in current-generation console sales, Microsoft's total revenue figures still stood at $1.95 billion - or £1.2 billion - and reflected a fall on just about 1 percent from the company's hardware sales figures for the same quarter last year.

The not-so-dismal revenue figures for the quarter were essentially an upshot of the fact that Xbox Live subscriptions witnessed a 15 percent increase during the three-month period; with the result that the current number of users connected to the online service is nearly 40 million.

Meanwhile, in comparison to Microsoft's Xbox 360 sales figures during the quarter, the numbers shared by rivals Sony and Nintendo show that while the Sony PS3 console sold approximately 63 million units from March; the sales figures of Nintendo Wii in June 2012 stood at over 96 million units.