Microsoft: Xbox 360 sales 'accelerating'

s Microsoft prepares for the E3 video game conference next week, the company is already taking the opportunity to promote its progress in that arena.

According to the software giant, it has now sold 55 million Xbox 360 units worldwide since the device's launch in 2005. Perhaps most importantly, sales are "accelerating," Microsoft said, and in the first four months of 2011, Xbox 360 sales were up 29 percent compared to the same period in 2010.

That success, partly due to the launch of the Kinect motion-gaming peripheral last year, is helping Microsoft claim that it's bucking a common trend in the gaming-hardware business that sees console sales start to decline in the fifth and sixth years of their life cycle.