I think that's their goal.

http://www.xbox-scene.com/ (scroll down towards middle of page...there are links to more articles.)


Microsoft Confirms 600k-1M Banned Consoles?
>> Since yesterday's rumour about the amount of consoles banned from LIVE during this Ban Wave (altho I wonder if I should still call it a 'wave') lots of general-public news sites started posting it as a fact today. It even seems like msnbc (FYI: a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC) puts these numbers in the mouth of the Redmond company:

Anywhere between an estimated 600,000 and 1 million players who use Microsoft's Xbox Live gaming service will be cut off from the service because they have modified their game consoles or played games that were illegally downloaded from file-sharing sites, according to the company.


However a real quote made today by Microsoft on venturebeat.com says:

"While we don't comment on specific numbers, Microsoft's commitment to combat piracy and support safer and more secure game play for the more than 20 million members of the Xbox Live community remains a top priority. All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and modifying their Xbox 360 console violates the Xbox Live terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox Live. We can assure you that if an Xbox Live member follows the Xbox Live terms of use, purchased a retail copy of Modern Warfare 2 and played the game on an unmodified Xbox 360, no action will be taken."


You'll notice the latter part of the quote is also on the msnbc article.
So while the number might be right (or not), I believe this rumour got out of hand and Microsoft never actually confirmed these numbers to anyone, at least not on-the-record. FYI: There are about 33M consoles sold worldwide (19M in US/CA) to-date and about 20M Xbox LIVE users.
And ... I'm not even gonna start about how inaccurate and incomplete many of these articles are ;)