Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices Division senior VP Don A. Mattrick already made headlines last week when he boasted that the Xbox 360 would best Sony's PlayStation 3 in global console sales "this generation" during its E3 conference. Mattrick's confidence didn't let up one bit in an post-E3 interview with Eurogamer, believing his company will also overtake Sony in the console software race with a telling lead over the course of the next three or four years. Yep, he's still got the global console market in mind too.

Part of Mattrick's confidence stems from the established Xbox 360 userbase, and he deemed the average 360 user to be "the most sophisticated media consumer on the planet". The 18-26 year-old crowd likely has their own income, and more importantly they potentially have better influence on the gaming habits for both their younger and older family members.

We know that our third-party partners have a tremendous well of content coming to our platform so there's support. We know that we're driving the majority of their revenue and profit growth. We know that in prior generations, whoever creates that ecosystem where people can scale, can be profitable, can grow, that they tend to win.

The other thing we know is Sony's given guidance and said their goal is to create ten million units this coming year. Needless to say, our aspiration is to do more. We also know we have a volume lead both in Europe and North America, and with that volume lead in the aggregate, when you add in Japan, is larger than Sony's.

Mattrick conceded they had to pull Bungie's upcoming game from their conference, as part of a number of changes made quite simply to keep things under ninety minutes. On the bright side, he did hint at a possible "well-attended" Halo-only event where Bungie's as-of-yet unrevealed title could make an ever bigger impact "in a more intimate setting than the E3 briefing".

The commentary keeps up in a response to how Microsoft should feel about Blu-ray emerging triumphant over HD-DVD as the next-gen optical disc format of choice. The Xbox 360 previously backed HD-DVD over Blu-ray, before Toshiba pulled the plug on its internal HD-DVD development. Mattrick was certainly not about to imply that the Xbox 360 could potentially support Blu-ray as a result, and instead explains that if high-definition content is what the consumer wants, the Xbox 360 already has them covered with digital downloads.

I think that what people want is digital high-def content, I think that's what our box provides, and we've announced several movie partners - and one in particular, Netflix, for the streaming technology. People love being able to download and interact instantaneously with high-def content. I don't have to go somewhere, I don't have to buy a disc, I don't have to pay a 12-14 dollar or 6-7 pound premium to do that. I don't have to have my face be two feet in front of my TV to see the difference.