At 29 percent, July's NPD revenue decline was even sharper than analysts expected -- especially in the hardware arena, which dropped 37 percent year-on-year for July. But with 203,000 units sold during the month, Xbox 360's unit sales came out modestly ahead of Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter's 190,000 estimate. According to Microsoft, these sales help spell further unit growth for the platform. In fact, with a 17 percent boost in unit sales over the first 7 months of 2009, following hardware price cuts, Microsoft says its platform is the only one showing unit growth in 2009, titling itself "the industry's sole bright spot in 2009." (The company didn't specify whether this unit growth also led to overall revenue growth for the month.) The company also confirmed to UK trade paper MCV that the console's European userbase is up to 9 million, accounting for 27 percent of the region's console marketshare. Most consoles, in terms of unit sales, underperformed even conservative analyst predictions, and according to Kaufman Bros.' Todd Mitchell, the PlayStation 3 "actually lost share to the PS2." He also says that much of the drop-off in hardware revenue falls on the shoulders of a stark 55 percent decline in July Wii sales.