[Valigarmander]

Microsoft Denies Claim of 1 Million Banned 360s

Right around last week's release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Microsoft issued a wave of Xbox Live bans, with some reports saying they totaled between 600,000 to as many as 1 million modified consoles. While the extent of the bans was certainly immense (a glance at Craigslist following the culling proved that conclusively enough), Xbox Live general manager Marc Whitten denies the number was as stratospheric as a million.

"We didn't release the number. I cannot explain to you why people would think it was a million people. It wasn't a million people," Whitten said in an interview with VentureBeat, where he also called the process of banning XBL users a "cat and mouse game."

"These were people that were pirating software," Whitten explained. "We try to keep sanctity of life from a safety and anti-cheating perspective and we protect our partners...I think we do a really good job understanding what people are doing on the system. That applies to intellectual property (piracy) and how we treat the community in terms of harassment. We are committed to making it better and better."

So it looks like we'll never know exactly how many users were recently banned, but we know at least that it was less than 1 million pirates and/or verbal harassers.