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From the announcement, XBox's live director takes hyperbole of one's achievements to a new level:

Seven years ago we laid out our vision for the connected console when we launched Xbox LIVE. We believed then that the power of the Internet to connect people would revolutionize living room entertainment. It started with amazing multiplayer games, and we’ve since seen that bet pay off again and again with the launches of Xbox 360, Marketplace, Netflix and powerful social features like Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm. None of this would have been possible without the success of LIVE as a multiplayer gaming network.

Netflix, Facebook, and Twitter would never have happened without XBox live? Really?

well to be honest I completely expected to be modded as a troll.
but seriously, if you care at all about Live I'd recommend not playing a backup on Live at the moment, since there are many reports on http://xbox-scene.com/ as well as on http://gamerscoreblog.com/team/archive/2007/05/17/ 545414.aspx
which show that Microsoft has dropped the ban hammer.

Even Microsoft, the one supporter of the HD-DVD, have given up on the format.

That's not a new controller. It's just an attachment for a controller. So you can just put it on when you need it.

And you'll get the connectivity to messenger that you want - when someone on your friends list signs on to their Xbox 360, you'll see that they're on the 360 and what they're playing.

I don't know where you got your numbers but MS had over 5 Million SOLD in June and they're expecting 10 million by this holiday. So yes in it's first year is is outselling the PS2, for whatever reason, be it supply or demand.

Also I believe the GP is refering to the Austrailian market who figures show that the Xbox 360 is currently the fastest selling console in Austrailia.

That amount of storage space for games would be nice to have, but really wont be utilized for a while, and only for certain types of games.

Actually, according to Microsoft (several times) the HD-DVD add-on will never be used for games, period, end of discussion. See reference material here and here and here, just to show a few examples.

Aside from that, I agree with your post. MS isn't doing this to promote a format as much as they're doing it to spur more sales of their console. $600 for an HD-DVD player is still a decent price at the moment, and if you consider that most people considering the add-on will already have the X360 at that point, it looks a lot more like $200 to them. Plus, it's a completely non-requisite component for the system -- as opposed to the PS3, where the BD-drive is so important to Sony that they've delayed the console launch TWICE because of it. I'm all for Sony taking as long as it takes to get it right, but there's a point where their 'top-of-the-line' console starts to look like a very, very expensive way for them to promote their new (and ultimately doomed, like UMD, betamax, and mini-disc) proprietary media format.

3.3m sold in the US
1.3m sold in the EU
400k sold elsewhere

http://gamerscoreblog.com/team/archive/2006/07/20/ 536283.aspx

• This quarter, we shipped 1.7 million Xbox 360 consoles, bringing our cumulative sales to date to 3.2 million consoles with 1.8 million in North America, 1.1 million in Europe and 300,000 in the rest of the world.
  
• Attach rates on the Xbox Live service remain strong, with more than half of all Xbox 360 consoles sold connected to the service either via Silver or Gold tier memberships.
  
• Gamers have downloaded 10 million pieces of digital content from Xbox Live Marketplace in less than five months. Over 4 million downloads have been made from Xbox Live Arcade since launch.
  

The xbox team is not working on Vista. So sayeth the xbox team: http://gamerscoreblog.com/team/archive/2006/03/24/ 533961.aspx