Microsoft's first party titles bring all the fans to the yard and they're like it's better than yours.

In a statement that is bound to rile the most passionate Nintendo fans Xbox's corporate vice president Dennis Durkin has claimed that Microsoft's first party titles are better than Nintendo's. Microsoft's first party titles include, most famously, the Halo series as well as games such as Kinect Adventures, Forza Morosport and Crackdown.

While talking to IndustryGamers he seemed offended when it was suggested Microsoft may need to purchase more studios, which led to this response:

"I would ask you to go and look at some of your data, just to compare first party performance over the course of this lifecycle, because I think our first party performance in terms of quality bars and units per title this shift has been superior to our competition's."

If this statement reaches Nintendo's headquarters we wouldn't be surprised if they fired back with some statistics of their own but looking at VGChartz the current worldwide top ten include Nintendo franchises Wii Sports/Resorts, Pokémon, Mario Kart, Zelda and Wii Fit. While this is not over the course of the lifecycle, as Mr. Durkin argues, it does at least suggest the units per title argument may be slightly off base.

Of course corporate self-promotion at the expense of others is hardly new or exclusive to Microsoft but it is always the start of a lively debate.