PSN's '17 million' statistic includes PS3, PSN, official forums

by Ross Miller on Jan 14th 2009 6:57PM

When Sony rattled off at last week's CES that 17 million PlayStation Network accounts had been registered, we were at once both impressed and skeptical. That number happens to match Xbox Live's data that was released days prior, despite its one-year lead and more aggressive push in the field.

The Doubting Thomases over at MTV Multiplayer got in touch with Sony to clarify the figure and gain some more perspective on the issue. As it turns out, that number includes people who have created accounts via PS3, PSP or the official website, which requires a PSN ID to access the forums. While still impressive, we're happier to have some more context on this one.

Source

Tags: CES-2009, PlayStation-Network, PlayStation-Store, PS3, PSN, Sony

Reader Comments (73)

Pretty sneaky sis!

Ancient Japanese secret, huh?

Ancient Japanese Secret: "The precipitating nitrogenous fruiting bodies partially represent the willingness of the tribal members to precariously balance upon the dreams of samurai otters"*

I like to think of myself as the official anti-sanity officer of Joystiq.

* Unfortunately original content spewed from my neurons.

The XBL figures also includes the free Silver accounts that can't play online, which a lot of people have duplicates of, including myself, to dl demos from other regions.

These numbers, from both parties, really mean nothing but cheap PR.

i had a Live Silver account before my 360 even showed up after i bought it online. you can make them on Xbox.com. and i use the same account for my PS3, PSP, and Playstation.com forums, but i do have another EU account for the rare occasion they get a demo we dont get in the US (should come in handy for KZ2).

so yea, both companies strew the numbers. i dont see it as unethical on either side anyway. plus the PSN one is free so your bound to have more. really doesnt mean anything more than a number anyway.

The truth always comes back to bite you in the butt.

...or in the fanbase.

yeah...in the butt.

maybe they'll flaunt how many people have posted ps3 related youtube videos next

pretty much as relevant

ah the good ol' PR Spin.. fueling fanboys' flames since 1965...

this should be interesting

Unlike your post.

Seriously, why do people make worthless posts like "first" or "engage flame shield". All it does is point you out as being a worthless bell-end who's opinion you can safely ignore.

wtf, a post AND a counter post got both low ranked. is there like a black hole in this area or something?

can't wait to see how somebody will spin this and say somethin like half of the psn accounts are either dummy or fake foreign accounts.

I wouldn't be surprised, what with how much better the PS1 Classics are in Japan.

But that would be an extremely small minority of these accouts

i figured as much. there are a lot of psp's out there, sony. A LOT.

Does that include how many people have looked at the console too?

and yet strangely lower than the number of people who own the console

el serpiente, do you ever post anything on topic? All I have seen from you do is name calling and insults. Really, I can't think of a comment you have made on a gaming topic about gaming.

Maybe Microsoft should just release their live id numbers for email, forums, product support, etc. It's just about as informative as Sony's Bullsh*t numbers.

Don't the Xbox forum use the LiveID?

There are also people with live tags that don't own 360s. There are also people that don't care about achievements and make new live accounts each month for the free 30 days.

Either Sony and MS can report the numbers they have, or try divination magic about how many are temporary or made for trolling or whatever, but there isn't much point to it.

Not saying either company's numbers are more reliable, just that the best they can do is say "we have x number of accounts".

This article should have been titled:

Flamebait: COME AND GET IT BOYS!!

With the caption of some cowboy ringing a triangle calling them in.

nah, save that title for the next post about Killzone 2

i'm still waiting for joystiq to post about the street fighter 4 tournament

"i'm still waiting for joystiq to post about the street fighter 4 tournament"

and also the rumor KZ2 bundle rumor. Come on Joystiq catch up

not to mention every1 has 3 accounts to access the different market places.

Which is, of course, true for Live as well. I have multiple account on both systems.

I'm willing to bet that 99.9% of PS3 owners have no idea that there are regional PSN stores.

I actually don't, and I should. There are games in Eu that I want to play. But do you have to log out of your US account and into the other regional accounts to play games bought from those stores? If so, I'll stick to the US account.

@Levi

Nope, anything you buy in another region can be played under any account. The only catch is the account you created to buy the foreign store item must remain on the system. If you ever deleted it for some reason the game will no longer work for the other accounts. But that really shouldn't be a big deal since I don't know why you would delete the user account anyway.

BTW, I do own a game from the Japanese PSN store so I can confirm what I'm saying.

hmmm... what about changing hard drives? That would delete said account data from the PS3 I'm guessing. I can see two reasons to change hard drives in the next year: A- if I ever break down and trade my PS3 for a BC PS3 on Craigslist (if anyone has a good reason why I shouldn't do this, lemme know), or B- games like Skate 2 taking up 2GB during installation, as well as the ridiculous amounts of PSN games I buy.

I think I'd just wait for the game to be released here, but there is at least 1 instance where the game will probably never end up here and I want it.

I'll probably break down and do it at some point.

@Levi

I'm pretty sure you can redownload games onto a new hard drive if your old one breaks. For one, games can be put on up to 5 PS3 systems. This isn't the case witrh movies you may have bought, but it's true for games.

I know for a fact it's no problem if you're just upgrading. Most of my current games, including my Japanese PSN purchase, came with my stock 60 GB hard drive. But I upgraded to a 320 GB a few months ago and everything still works fine. I just used the back-up utility built into the PS3 to back-up everything on an external drive, I put the new drive in, and then restored all my data from the back-up. It put all my games and accounts on the new drive automatically.

Oh... Well thanks for the info dude! Very helpful.

@Levi
Changing the HDD is easy (as long as you have one of the new machines with the better quality screws that don't strip like tin foil) but the backup utility will not support most games that have been patched for trophies.
For ex: after reloading your Burnout Paradise or GTA4 data (after switching HDDs) and starting the game you'll be told that the software doesn't believe you made the data and will make you start a new game.
Some games (like LBP) aren't as bad and will let you play your old save but wont let you get any new trophies.
I think Fallout 3 is the only game that was patched properly so you can use your savegames on a new HDD.

It's enough to make me hate trophies. They used to be just a useless waste of resources; now they seem to render the backup utility useless.

So it's slightly more deceptive than Microsoft's statistics that include Silver accounts?

Poor Sony, always trying to upstage someone ;)

Next thing you know Nintendo will count all the different friend codes and claim they have the most users.

Maybe Microsoft can count the number of times a 10 year old on Xbox Live uses a racial slur to claim they have the most culturally diverse fanbase

I want to know how many PSN accounts have actual purchases on them. Considering all legit PSN accounts may not have content bought on them, but knowing how many accounts have items that people have spent cash on will give a better idea how successful the PSN really is since those are the accounts most ppl will use and not get rid of or It's just like throwing away money.

I also want to know Sony's definition of an "active" account. Cause I'll admit I have an asian PSN account for the Prologue demo years back but it is in no way active anymore.

Im guessing "active" means registered. Also, not buying things doesn't mean PSN isn't successful, since I'm sure there are a lot of people just using the service for multiplayer or Quincying

so basically, that includes millions of people who probably only own a ps2

and 99% of people on the offical forums have a PS3

in order to keep using your old playstation underground account you had to convert it to a psn account. so all the PU accounts turned into PSN.

im pretty sure their announcing of 17 million users was prior to that being forced upon all PU members. it was definitely OPEN to convert your account around then, but not yet required. so it's kinda fuzzy.

either way it's still impressive considering the xbl's lead on psn and ps3.

This is Sony after all. What else would you have expected?

A 35% defect rate? $300 lifetime costs for multiplayer? 100% markup on wifi and hard discs? Abandoning console support after just 4 years?

Crushing buyer's remorse... Oh wait, that's the PS3

Well, bottomline is, the number of active multiplayer playing console owners would be much lower - a few million on both PS3 and 360 maybe - though the proportion to total sold would obviously be much higher for PS3 than 360 because online gaming is free on PSN. The 17 million figure is meaningless - but as long as MS refuses to give out the exact number of Gold acounts, Sony cannot reveal the number of true active accounts either can they, that would simply be bad PR "oh look MS has 17 million SILVER accounts while Sony has only 5 million active multiplayers"

Why post this? Who cares? Its funny PR spin. No need to attempt to clarify, point fingers, claim bias or call people stupid names.

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PSN's '17 million' statistic includes PS3, PSN, official forums

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