We knew that the Xbox 360 has been doing pretty well in the West as of late, but we didn't realize Microsoft has kind of been dominating the Western console industry.

In a financial release from Microsoft, they said that Xbox 360 has been the number one console in the United States for a whopping 18 straight months. The same release also gave out quite a bit of information regarding Microsoft's financial status, which is fairly healthy right now. They drew in $18.06 billion dollars in revenue this quarter, up from $17.37 billion in the same quarter last year.

Overall, this resulted in a net loss of nearly half a billion dollars. Now that sounds bad, but people more knowledgeable in the tech business don't seem too concerned. That loss comes from a bad deal to acquire online ad service aQuantive which set them back $6.2 billion (which is lunch money as far as Microsoft is concerned.)

That said, revenue is rising year-over-year, and speculation is that the release of Windows 8 will boost their income even more. So far it looks like Microsoft is going to be in a position of great strength when they get ready to launch the successor to the Xbox 360.