After a somewhat stagnant 2007 for Xbox 360, which saw Wii eat into its twelve month lead, Microsoft has today confirmed that (as expected) Master Chief's third adventure in Halo 3 was a significant cornerstone release in the last three months of the year - selling over 8.1 million copies worldwide.

The latest figures from the Redmond company, released through Reuters, also saw the global hardware sales of the Xbox 360 top 17.7 million units, with 4.3 million units sold in the last quarter of 2007 alone. Thanks to the global shortages of Wii (and the lack of sales data from Nintendo so far) it's unclear whether this keeps Xbox 360 ahead of the little white box.

Sales figures for Bioware Corp.'s first-person RPG Mass Effect have also been released, with the debut adventure of Commander Shepard topping 1.6 million units since its launch in late November.

Despite a 2008 line-up that includes Fable 2, Halo Wars, Banjo, Too Human, and (hopefully) Alan Wake, it's difficult to see where the next first-party uber-hit will come from for Xbox 360 in the next twelve months now that the Chief has been put into stasis. That is, unless Epic have been secretly working on a Christmas '08 release for Marcus Fenix's next Horde-infested outing in Gears of War 2...