Microsoft just released its financial results for the first quarter of its new fiscal year. The Entertainment and Devices Division (EDD) which houses Microsoft's videogame ambitions had a strong quarter. Microsoft shipped 2.1m Xbox 360s worldwide in the quarter, bringing lifetime to date Xbox 360 shipments to 33.5m worldwide. This makes the userbase of the Xbox 360 larger than the N64 (32.93m LTD), putting the Xbox 360 as the largest 'second place' console userbase ever.

Revenues for the EDD portion of Microsoft were flat from the September 2008 quarter at $1.89b. However, profit increased substantially. In the September 2009 quarter, EDD profited over $300m, roughly double the figure of the previous September quarter. The profit jump was based on software, such as Halo 3: ODST making up a larger portion of EDD revenues in the current quarter than in the September 2008 quarter. Microsoft claims an attach rate of 8.7 on slide 15 of its September 2009 results powerpoint, up from 8.6 through June 2009. No region or source is given for this figure, so we are assuming it is Xbox 360 game shipments worldwide through September 2009. This would mean 291.45m Xbox 360 games have been shipped worldwide, up from 270m through June 2009.

Microsoft's shipment figures are in line with expectations. Vgchartz had expected Microsoft's figures to reach 33.3m hardware units (1.9m July-Sept), and 293m games (23m July-Sept), so the actual figures for the quarter were only off by 1.5m units of software and 0.2m units of hardware. We're expecting Sony and Nintendo figures to be similarly close next week.

Contact Vgchartz at jmazel@vgchartz.com