60 million PSN accounts created to date, says Sony's Stringer

by Randy Nelson on Jan 5th 2011 8:35PM

During the company's CES 2011 press conference this evening, Sony Corp. chairman/president/CEO and honest-to-goodness knight Sir Howard Stringer reported that, to date, there have been 60 million PlayStation Network accounts created. The news was dropped as Stringer spoke of the growing market for connected devices and Sony's place in it.

At last year's CES, it was Sony Computer Entertainment chief Kaz Hirai who revealed that, at the time, 38 million PSN accounts had been activated. This year's numbers stand in contrast to the latest user base figures for Microsoft's Xbox Live service, which as of this past November sat at 25 million users, half of which were paid subscribers. Though impressive on face value, it's worth nothing that Hirai just days ago confirmed that PSN is not yet profitable. The hardware maker hopes to change that in part through PlayStation Plus subscriptions, the number of which have been sold has yet to be disclosed.

Of course, Sony's latest figure also includes PSP users and PSN accounts created via the PlayStation website. As with delivery of these stats in the past, there's no saying whether or not Sony will go into more detail down the line about where most of the users came from and what they're doing.

Source: Engadget

Tags: ces, ces-2011, Howard-Stringer, playstation, PlayStation-Network, ps3, psn, psp, sony

Reader Comments (68)

How many are one guy making multiple accounts so he can "pwn nubz" on games at a low level? Thats why XBL is nice, one paid account means less nonsense.

@AFATALERR0R

Sad thing is, there really are people that go through the trouble of making a new account, just for that purpose.

Porpoise.

@Enosoma It is a lot of work. I didnt realize I was the first comment so I'll add this: I know there are people on XBL that do that with 1 month accounts and 48 hour cards but at least they have limited resources or have to pay the $7.99 for a month of nub pwnage. haha

@AFATALERR0R

Who cares, they have no life wether it be on XBL, PSN, or Nintendo whatever they use now for online gaming.

@AFATALERR0R

That hardly seems a good reason to pay for the service. Who cares if people have multiple accounts? That's nice, I don't want to pay multiple times for access just because we have different profiles in our house.

@jph89 Unlike people who comment on blogs. Their lives are FILLED with excitement.

@ElCapitanAmerica I'd be willing to bet that paying for something makes you respect it more. If something is free and almost a limit-less source why care if you get banned? I keep my GT on a USB stick so I can go to any 360 in my house and play. If I have a friend over that doesnt have a gold account (rare) I bring them in as a guest. Its not like you cant play if you dont pay. As long as someone has a paid account you're good. I think if you're really into playing online the fee isnt much of a factor. Especially when it comes to the service XBL offers.

@AFATALERR0R
I have several accounts. My main one, my Japanese account, my European account, and my account that I use to download demos (I hate having a crowded download history, especially with so much content I buy).

@AFATALERR0R I've never heard of someone doing that. I've heard of multiple accounts for multiple regions, but never multiple accounts just to be a lower level. Sounds like BS to me.

@AFATALERR0R

You keep your profile on a USB drive? Hilarious. I just go into the other room and log in to my other PS3 and bam... there's my profile. If someone else wants to play, they can just log in to my wife's profile. And whaddaya know, all the profiles have the same features and functionality. If I was really hell-bent on using my profile on someone else's PS3, I'd just spend thirty seconds creating a new user on their machine and signing in to my profile.

Oh, and can't forget the wonders of game-sharing. I can pop into my old roommates' profiles on my machine (and they can jump into mine on their machiens) to get each other's PSN purchases.

@End User Oh yeah, and we can all play all the downloaded games on all the profiles. Neat, huh?

@End User You can play the downloaded games on all profiles on the 360 console aswell, who told you you couldn't?

Unfortunately people do create other accounts just to own people on a lower level, it is very sad and quite pathetic that people would go out of their way to create a new account just for this purpose, especially if they do it on XBL. I can bet it does happen more on PS3 though due to tere being no fee.

@End User Its nice keeping it on USB stick, I also keep all my game saves with it. I have 4 360's in my house, we use them instead of crappy cable boxes to watch live and recorded TV and hundreds of movies with Media Center (does everything? No?) and play games. So its nice to just walk up to it and plug in your GT and have all of your saves anywhere. We dont have to be logged into to Live to watch TV, but its nice to still get messages and game invites. I just hit record on what I'm watching and go on to play a game with friends. If gameshare was supposed to be used as a way to screw developers out of 4 sales they would have made it to where you dont have to compromise the security of your account.

@Deezul AwT

Man, I didnt know there were so many people who had more then 1 account so they can always be at low levels in video games.......guess I should get on that.

@AFATALERR0R
Although I refuse to have a second account for PSN (or Live), My mate has had about 8 by now, and another who has had 3 on each console - both companies should only count regulary active accounts and not just checking in to check their marketplaces

I don't know why they announce this crap. It's not going to make me buy a PSP or other Sony stuff.

And I doubt shareholders will be happy with such a vague, overly optimistic numbers without at least some form of explanation.

So who are they trying to impress?

@Enosoma
They aren't trying to impress anyone, they're just massive trolls trying to start flamewars across the internet.

@mcnichoj

Giant enemy trolls?

@Enosoma

They're are trying to rub it in the face of MS since they usually announce how many XBL users they have up to that point. Being that PSN is free, of course there will be more users.

@Enosoma

This is CES. Though if this comment were on an E3 related post I might have to agree with you.

@Enosoma

I don't think they "announced" it, they mentioned the number of accounts to support their point about "the growing market for connected devices and Sony's place in it."

I'm guessing it was Engadget that decided to single out the figure. Sony has many different connected devices besides the PS3, so I really don't think this is a PS3 vs Xbox thing, it was probably just taken out of context by Engadget (or by the readers misinterpreting it).

How many of those are game-share accounts? ;)

@NukaCola
Uhm?! Aren't Gameshare accounts uses only one PSNID on several consoles? Not the other way 'round.

@NukaCola Not as many as the inflated 360 numbers due to dying consoles. ;)

How many of these accounts are owned by one person? I know someone on my friend list with about 5 different psn accounts. Most of those 25 million xbox users are unique. Forget the numbers, just release legend of dragooon on psn plz!?

@dakoe3

Something is not right surrounding the whole Legend of Dragoon IP... as far as I know wholly owns the thing, so one would expect it to be of the first PSOne titles released on PSN, but its not for any region. And yes.. that 60m count means nothing...I only use one account for gaming but I have 4 other accounts just for the purpose of accessing other region PSN stores for demos and what not.

@RagingStormX

Sony* wholly owns...

@RagingStormX

Its in the Japanese PS store now.
http://www.siliconera.com/2010/12/22/the-legend-of-dragoon-sneaks-to-playstation-game-archives/

Majority are duplicates. I have a few for different countries and clans, so what's the big deal?

@SpaceFox 45 million Ps3s sold, thats assuming every single person has it connected to some internet connection with an account, that still leaves 15 million that are automatic duplicates. I'd be willing to bet more than half are duplicates.

@AFATALERR0R In math terms, if you are a PS3 owner, you have 1.3 PSN profiles.

@AFATALERR0R

45 million PS3's but you forgot to add PSP's, which also use PSN accounts.

I'm three of them!

To be honest, though, I really only use one of them. One of the others is only used when me and a friend shares dlc, and the other has never been used and I wonder why I made it.

MS: 24 million = profitable

Sony: 60 million = not profitable

Someone's business model is in serious need of a mathematician.

@SpartacusMagnus

XBL:12.5 million (half of the 25million), pay for that service

PSN: 60million of dont pay for the service

@shadowhowl1900

Edit: forgot some PSN people could be PSN+

@shadowhowl1900

I know, but it's still a bit bewildering. I mean, 12.5 million Gold accounts equals roughly 625 million a year in revenue, which is only a fraction of MS's overall online revenue stream.

@SpartacusMagnus

Funny how Sony liked to boast that their service is free and all... Well, now we can see where it has taken them

I dunno, I created a PSN account prior to owning a PS3, then I couldn't remember the password and could never log in to it again. I ended up creating another account on PSN after I owned a PS3. To this day, I still can't use the account I originally created-- it says it's already used, but it's never registered any activity.

Don't they count PSP's, PS3's and the site's accounts all together?
Also how many are just some guy creating like 10 different accounts?

@trickybuz93

My PSP and PS3 account is the same thing, so it doesn't necessarily mean that PSP and PS3 are different accounts and count differently.

@trickybuz93

Way to restate everything everyone has been saying this whole time.

These figures do nothing for me. Just the corporate equivalent of "my d**k is bigger than yours". I have all the current gen consoles and this does not make me want to play my PS3 any more than I already do, which is far less than the Xbox 360.

Sony, spend less time and money gathering useless stats and more time improving PSN.

@Styli

You seem to have a lot of advice for Sony recently.

@Enosoma

I have a lot of advice for everyone ;)

I'm sitting at 5 of them myself with a couple friends profiles on my Machine as well! Numbers are fun!

I think a better yardstick would for companies to release the figures of how many unique ip's logged on to their network per day/week/month.

Sony claims more PS3's are hooked up to the internet than 360's, but only offer these nebulous numbers.

@SpartacusMagnus But what if there are multiple PS3s in a household? There used to be three people in my house with PS3s, but I believe it only shows up as one IP addy to the outside world (the router generates individual internal IP addys).

And they are still losing money?!?!?...what exactly is their profit model for this project?

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60 million PSN accounts created to date, says Sony's Stringer

Reader Comments (68)

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:36PM AFATALERR0R said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:40PM Enosoma said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:42PM AFATALERR0R said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:51PM jph89 said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:54PM ElCapitanAmerica said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:57PM Deezul AwT said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:59PM AFATALERR0R said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 9:10PM mywhitenoise said

Posted: Jan 6th 2011 12:17AM End User said

Posted: Jan 6th 2011 12:24AM End User said

Posted: Jan 6th 2011 12:27AM End User said

Posted: Jan 6th 2011 3:27AM iTz FiNaL said

Posted: Jan 6th 2011 9:57AM AFATALERR0R said

Posted: Jan 6th 2011 10:52AM jph89 said

Posted: Jan 6th 2011 2:55PM Mazrael said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:39PM Enosoma said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 9:36PM mcnichoj said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 10:06PM Enosoma said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 10:13PM Prboi said

Posted: Jan 6th 2011 1:55AM Haizeus said

Posted: Jan 10th 2011 9:11AM brotherfranciz said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:41PM NukaCola said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 10:04PM iononion said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 10:54PM The angry pro consumer gaming ga said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:42PM dakoe3 said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 9:15PM RagingStormX said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 9:16PM RagingStormX said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 10:09PM iononion said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:42PM SpaceFox said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:45PM AFATALERR0R said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:52PM My Prerogative said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:54PM jph89 said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:44PM My Prerogative said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:50PM My Prerogative said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:45PM SpartacusMagnus said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:52PM shadowhowl1900 said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:55PM shadowhowl1900 said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 9:07PM SpartacusMagnus said

Posted: Jan 6th 2011 10:44AM TheShaper said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:46PM Starcade said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:49PM trickybuz93 said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:56PM ElCapitanAmerica said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 10:09PM Enosoma said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:49PM Styli said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 10:20PM Enosoma said

Posted: Jan 6th 2011 9:22AM Styli said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:52PM DrunkRaba said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:54PM SpartacusMagnus said

Posted: Jan 6th 2011 12:32AM End User said

Posted: Jan 5th 2011 8:57PM hiruuamon said

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