Xbox Live stats: 'About half' of subscribers pay for Gold, 3 hours daily average

"but we're honestly a little surprised that fully half of the population still hasn't upgraded to Gold."

Really?

WHO HAS TIME TO GO ON THREE HOURS A DAY?

And that's the average; wow there are some saddos around...

I can hear Bobby Kotick already... "That's how much a month? Why don't we get more of that? Our investors will have our heads for this! Blizzard release the expansion now!!"

Whoa! that a lot of gold.

I don't mind paying for XBL Gold Membership if I can find it for $30-35.

I wish Microsoft had an option to buy "days" instead. For example, I could buy a 30 days card, and use only 2 days (48 hours) just Saturday and Sunday.

@ichibansony

PlayStation Plus Doubles that?

I really don't know, I'm curious.

Stop making everything require Gold and I'd use your Console more. As it is my time and My money on Games is going more towards my PS3 now.

Sad really because i prefer the 360 controller, but I don't play games online, not my thing, and I don't have the time... I play single player only 99% of the time.

@ichibansony LOL no they don't
This is Gold not the free Silver.

I don't play any console that long. 3 hours is a lot of time for any single night.

@ichibansony of coarse Playstation doubles that. IT'S FREE!

I would guess a huge chunk of those hours comes from Netflix.

Im not renewing Gold when mine expires. All I used it for was Netflix and with the PS3 version being so much better and the price increase I have 0 incentive to renew. I imagine that percentage is going to keep dropping.

Not sure how many 1 month gold trials you get with a new xbox 360 but times that by the current number of systems sold but im sure there counting all account that have been made instead of active.

I see it as im paying for multiplayer and if it was free then I would have twice as many people to play with ?

the average of 3 hours is iffy. i can't tell you the number of times i've just had my console on, sitting on the dashboard while i'm off doing other things. it's a terrible habit i have and i'm sure that i'm not alone here.

@sonylchiban

did you get banned from 'toid?

Doesn't every single person that signs up for Live get a free month of Gold? Would they possibly count them too?

The attach rate per console, instead of per account, would be a more meaningful metric. Everyone in my family has an account, but I'm the only one with a Gold account, so whenever anyone wants to watch Netflix, he logs into my account. The fact that the other accounts are Silver doesn't really mean anything.

3 Hours a day is 100 hours a month.

Which honestly is sad.
Seems like billions of hours spent on meaningless entertainment.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for meaningless entertainment...in reasonable doses.

3 hours a day on average!?
Really?

Get a job, go outside, play with the earth, learn an instrument or a foreign language (or your native language!). Write a story, take pictures, form a garage band. Try to figure out foreign relations and policy, read books, learn to program...just be somehow constructive!

3 hours a few times a week seems more reasonable as blow-off time. I can't help but wonder at the lives of the people who spend nearly 20% of their waking hours playing (if they are an adult with a job it's something like 70% of their non-working/non-sleeping hours - which is pathetic any way you slice it). This is an average, which means some people are much higher of course, but even at the average, the image of someone sitting playing games all the time seems rather accurate.

As someone who makes games for a living I find it sad (at least based on the majority of games we have today...few of them deserve this kind of attention away from life).

I wonder what they count as real users...I must have about 3-4 other random silver accounts that I've made over the years that are just lying idle.

I pay $40 a year for ads, a network that doesn't even supply servers for multiplayer games, and charges me extra to download movies/shows from the service. Worse, they raise prices and still can't figure out a platform-wide matchmaking system so I can filter out screaming idiot kids and perennial cheaters.

F* YOU MICROSOFT!