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Helped along by higher-than-normal Black Friday sale activity and the launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 , the 360 moved 819,500 units in November, according to NPD data.

"Call of Duty was a big driver -- not just game sales, but also driving hardware. We also did the limited edition Modern Warfare 2 bundle which has for all intents and purposes sold out at retail for us," Aaron Greenberg , director of product management for Xbox 360, told IGN.

And although Greenberg could not provide exact bundle numbers, he did say Microsoft sold "hundreds of thousands" of the Modern Warfare-branded units in November. And although the PlayStation 3 also had a great month, selling 710,400 units, Sony's platform didn't come close to Microsoft's -- the opposite result analysts expected.

"As we had predicted to outsell the PlayStation 3 for this calendar year, we remain very much on path to do that and grow our install base relative to them," Greenberg said.

For November, Xbox 360 owns 30 percent of the gaming hardware market share, up from 26 percent during the same month last year, according to Greenberg. Halo: Reach will clearly be the biggest game of 2010 hands-down," Greenberg said. That certainly helped boost the Xbox 360's holiday numbers. And that's expected to grow as 2010 heats up.

"It's pretty clear to any gamer out there that you can already count 6-7 blockbuster exclusive titles that are coming in 2010. Being a game that is widely associated and leading on Xbox 360, particularly a lot of volume with Xbox Live and the online community, helped us. "The big thing about next year is that every single month we have a AAA title starting in January."

With Project Natal, Alan Wake and a slew of third-party sequels on the way (Splinter Cell: Conviction, Mass Effect 2, etc.) on the way, Microsoft is gearing up for another big year.

When asked about the PlayStation 3 Slim and whether Microsoft would ever consider such a redesign for its console, Greenberg said, "We feel great about the hardware that we have in the market today and our focus has been on great bundle and doing things like the holiday bundle, and not on going back to the drawing board on a console."