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The release of a new Halo game (and exclusive) for the Xbox One helped Microsoft's console beat the PS4 to become the October's best selling console for the U.S. market.

'Halo 5: Guardians' was the month's best selling game, despite being an Xbox One exclusive, and this helped push the Xbox One to the top spot for the first time this year, the NPD group reports. While no specific hardware numbers were given by NPD or by the game console companies themselves, Microsoft was quick to point out they're just had a rare victory against the PS4, thanks largely to what the company calls their best gaming line-up ever.

"The strength of the greatest games lineup in Xbox history drove record Xbox Live usage for October and made Xbox One the best-selling console in the U.S. with 81 percent growth compared to October 2014," said Xbox marketing boss Mike Nichols in a statement. "We saw amazing fan excitement, commercial success, and critical acclaim in October for Halo 5: Guardians, which was the best-selling game in the U.S., and other Xbox One titles launching earlier this fall, including Forza Motorsport 6, Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, Harmonix’s Rock Band 4, and Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Syndicate."

Despite the Xbox One's victory in October, the full list of top 10 game sales reveal just how much work Microsoft still must do in order to catch up to Sony's wildly successful console. 6 of the 7 multi-platform games in the top 10 saw sales of the game on the PS4 lead sales of the same games on the Xbox One.

Overall console sales were down from $271.1 million last October to $270.3 million, largely due to falling sales of portable game consoles (home based console sales rose by 3 percent). Game sales were down by 3 percent for the same comparison period.