Xbox by the numbers: 20m Xbox Live users, 10m nongaming, 39m Xbox 360 consoles worldwide

by Christopher Grant on Jan 6th 2010 10:45PM

While Microsoft's CES announcement that Xbox Live "is now an active community of over 20 million people" is somewhat blunted by Sony's claim of 38 million PlayStation Network accounts (though if our dozens of collective PSN accounts are any indication, some of us have more than one), Redmond did have some other numbers to share regarding Xbox and Xbox Live during tonight's CES keynote. First, "Nearly 10 million people have logged into Xbox Live's nongaming applications" including "Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Last.fm, Sky, Canal and Zune." We'll do the math for you: that's 50% of the Xbox Live audience, and those are all paying Gold users.

More numbers: "Between Christmas and New Years Day, Xbox Live experienced its busiest week ever, adding a new member every second and a record of more than 2.2 million concurrent members online." And not a network failure in sight! Congrats, Microsoft! Lastly, "there are now over 39 million Xbox 360 consoles around the world," "more than 500 million games have been sold" and "$20 billion spent in retail." Feel free to bookmark this post for frequent consultation in your comment debates.

Source

Tags: CES, CES-2010, Microsoft, Xbox-360, Xbox-Live

Reader Comments (84)

I believe that there are 38 million PSN account. I have 5

I believe there are 20m Xbox Live users: I have 2 accounts.

I have an account and I dont even have an Xbox I wouldn't trust any stat posted because there will always be people with more then usual: PSN, XBL Fingers and so on

I have three accounts and can't remember the last time I turned it on, much less played a game on it.

I'd like to see the data for PSN accounts used for PS3 gaming, not for PS3, PSP, and Sony's website.

Sony could have a bazillion accounts, who cares, they're free. Sony isn't making any money off of them.

If Microsoft had 10k LIVE accounts, that's at least 500k more dollars than Sony has.

You think Microsoft gives a rats ass how many online "accounts" the PSN has?

[banned]

...and one idiot trying to start a flame war.

Go go Joystiq.

"Member Since Jan 6th, 2010"

Just ignore him...

[banned]

Someone is sure starting the new year as an idiot....

I like calling people idiots, but I can go one step beyond.... You guys are buttholes

If you seriously think PSN compares to XBOX Live, you are sadly mistaken. I own both a Playstation 3 and an XBOX 360. I know for a fact that PSN blows and there is a reason that it's free. I play my XBOX 360 90% of the time.

I wouldn't rush to say that there are 10 mil gold accounts, I logged into Facebook and twitter at the beginning when it was open to all and I have a silver account.

A leaked document last year said that 56% of all XBL accounts are Gold.

Did you know that 86.4% of all statistics are made up?

@ Alan Hong

Including that one? ;)

An average of about 13 games per console owner? Not bad at all. With just a quick glance at my 360 collection, I have about 30. Kind of makes you wonder how many people are at the other end of the spectrum with 1-5 games.

I've got about 25.

I've got two. Consider me on the other end.

I've bought 57 360 games this gen so far, not including ME2 this month. I only still have about 5 though :\

360 is a software BEAST. I remember even during the first few slow years, just about any game with some press could do a million easily.

I will hand it to them, they sure can move software in the US. Well, everywhere to some degree, but US is phenominal considering it is also varied greatly in games, not just the same 5 constant wii games.

57 games?! What the he'll do you do for a living?

"What the he'll do you do for a living?"

Nothing a year ago, that's mainly the reason why I only have 5 games left now :(

I'll end up rebuying all the great ones I got rid of eventually.

ive got probably around 300 including Ps1,2,xbox,360,pc and ps3. But i guess i dont really buy anything but games and batman statues

One of these days I need to go through my whole game collection and take inventory. It makes me kind of sad to think that most of my PS1 titles never got played past the first level because I had no clue what I was doing with them.

Kind of thinking about putting current gen on hold and beating Spyro the Dragon...

@Dark Wayne: We were talking specifically about 360 games. I have too many games in general to count.

yeah i've got probably around 30 360 games, i dont have anything better to do so i did count most of my games : /

I've got 16 360 games, 6 Wii, 3 PS3 games, 3 PS2 games, 4 GC games, 4 DS games, and a partridge in a bear tree.

That would be an interesting stat. Average number of games owned by 360 owners, and average number of games owned by PS3 owners.

No idea how you'd go about gathering such data, especially with gamefly and owners of both consoles taken into account.

But what do I know? I don't collect data for a living.

I've only had 16 ps3 games total this gen, and I have 0 right now. Sucks using a console for exclusives only :\

@suit It's funny to remember what noobs we were when we were kids. Many memories of failure and confusion of such simple problems

@ Tmac

I was thinking before that if I owned a PS3, I would most likely only have about 5 titles for it. It's more than likely that I'd continue to do all my multiplat gaming on my 360 because, well...I'm a gamerscwhore.

@Markez

There are bear trees now?!

The bears will control the Midwestern United States by March. From there, there's no hope. May God have mercy on us all.

Since we're all doing this I have 27 PS3 games (including downloads), 10 PS2 (I used to have way more), 14 PS1, 2 360, 5 Xbox, an estimated 40 SNES games, 7 genesis, 4 Odyssey, 12 N64, and 8 Nes games.

Markez, you made me want to count.

I've got fourteen Atari games, seven Genesis games, five 32X games, two Sega CD games, eight SNES games, nine N64 games, seven Dreamcast titles, five GC titles, twenty Xbox titles, twenty-five PS2 titles, twenty-one PS3 titles, and twenty-nine 360 games. And seven DS titles, four GB carts, and six GBA carts.

I feel mildly embarrassed now.

Oh I wasn't counting download stuff. If we're doing that then it pushes my ps3 total to 40 and my 360 total to 113 (that includes XBLA and the few games on demand I have).

Fucking

bear trees

yes.

29 PS3 games, 6 360 games for this generation, and... 122 steam games. lol. A lot of those came in bundles though (like the id pack). I honestly cannot find more 360 games I'd enjoy (I buy multiplatform games on PS3), if a 360 game is on PC, I'll buy it for PC usually (ie. Mass Effect). So far I've picked up Halo 3, ODST, Gears 1+2, Lost Odyssey and Perfect Dark Zero (bleh).

12 PSP games, 60 PS3 games (including download games) and 5 PC games. I do buy alot of cheap PS3 games to trade them in at Gamestop though.

Assuming my math is correct, that could be as much as 500 million dollars a year from Live subs.

I'd say more than that actually. I believe its more expensive in other countries for xbox live (i.e. here, $85 retail which is $78 USD)

Yeah, but not all of those 10 million accounts are year-long accounts.

I actually felt a spike of anger when I read that. I don't pay for XBOX Live anymore (even though I miss Halo,) but still...it cuts me deep.

As Adam above said, some of those services had free trials so Silver users could log in, too.

Ahh you got me :P
It just shows how Microsoft will never drop this subscription based method unless they have to/find a new way to get more money.

@ Premature ejaculation man

I bet Sony is just licking their lips wanting a taste of that extra revenue money.

We will see PSN at a price. All these surveys are just testing the water. Eventually Sony is going to emulate the Live subscription model. How could they not after the investment they put into the PS3?

PlayFire is a great site to catalog your game collection. I haven't finished mine but the majority of my next gen stuff is updated. It automatically updates your games from XBL as you play them.

http://www.playfire.com/dlemay69/games/overview

Sorry, but your math is indeed horrible.

A) These are not all year long memberships.

B) There are gold free trial memberships everywhere, that count as an account created.

C) How the hell are you figuring that MS gets $50 even for every year long gold account that they sell. Online sales directly through XBL they're probably near it (CC fees), but what about all the cards sold through retailers? The retailer gets a cut, otherwise they wouldn't be selling them. And when retailers are constantly discounting the cards to $30/$40, how much do you think MS is actually getting for each card sold. Are you implying that these retailers sometimes sell the cards for $30 and pay back $50 to MS for the right to do that? Plus there's packaging and distribution costs for those in-store cards, etc.

That's almost 700,000 new subscriptions between Christmas and New Years ... i wonder how many of those are the month long subscriptions that come with some games.

You only get 48hr trials with a game. You get to create 3 accounts on your 360 with Gold for 1 month.

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Xbox by the numbers: 20m Xbox Live users, 10m nongaming, 39m Xbox 360 consoles worldwide

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