This past quarter may have not been very profitable for Microsoft, but the Xbox 360 has topped 70 million units in sales worldwide.

Microsoft released its last quarterly financial report, showing dramatically discrepant news for the company. While the Xbox 360 division has achieved an impressive sales milestone, Xbox 360 sales have also seen a significant decline in recent times.

The good news is that Microsoft has sold more than 70 million Xbox 360 consoles since the device's debut in November 2005, according to the company. That figure puts the console on the No. 8 spot on the all-time list of top-selling video game machines, just behind the PlayStation Portable.

While it's a major achievement, it is also worth noting that Microsoft's Xbox 360 has had a longer lifespan than most other earlier video game consoles. Historically, any one machine has rarely survived more than five years on the market without being replaced by a newer iteration. Seven years after the Xbox 360 launch, however, Microsoft still hasn't announced a successor, which leads to the not-so-good news.

The same financial reports also show that Microsoft's Xbox 360 division has not been very successful lately. The company has sold only 1.7 million Xbox 360 units over the last financial quarter, marking a 29 percent decline over the same period last year. Moreover, the Xbox 360 division posted total revenues of $1.95 billion, marking a one percent decline from the previous year.

There are numerous reasons for Microsoft's revenue drop, but the Xbox 360 has mainly been suffering from a lack of blockbuster titles recently. October has brought the launch of both Dishonored and XCOM: Enemy Unknown on the same day, indicating that the console doesn't lack promising, lucrative games. During the summer, however, the console had a relatively dead period.

This inconvenience can be largely attributed to developers and publishers holding back their best titles until the lucrative holiday shopping season draws to a close. The Halo 4 release on November 4, however, may change things for Microsoft and its Xbox 360. It may not drive as many Xbox 360 sales as Halo 3 did in 2007, but the game is still expected to cause quite a stir.