I attended an engineering speech by Nick Baker, the director of Xbox Console Design Architecture. He's one of the top chip architects on the Xbox 360's chips. Most of the chat was deep in the woods. But one of his comments was startling. He said that Microsoft had now sold 3.3 million consoles worldwide. Microsoft PR confirmed that number to me just now.
What's interesting is that Microsoft said in its earnings statement that it had shipped 1.75 million consoles by March 31. Because of its rough start in manufacturing, it took 4.5 months to reach that number. The original goal had been 3 million units in the first 90 days, but the manufacturing glitches scotched that goal. Now it looks like Microsoft is making up for lost time.
Microsoft's goal is 4.5 million to 5.5 million units by June 30.