It’s press conference time again thanks to the Consumer Electronics Show, and that means that Microsoft has released the obligatory statistics regarding the Xbox 360’s user base and LIVE memberships.
To date, roughly 39 million Xbox 360 units have been sold worldwide, about half of which, 20 million, are connected to Microsoft’s LIVE service as either Gold (paid) or Silver (free) members. Of those online users, half again use the system for non-gaming applications such as Netflix, Facebook, and Twitter.
As far as software goes, 500 million Xbox 360 games have been sold since the console’s launch.
I’m not surprised at all that only a quarter of 360 owners use the extraneous LIVE functions; they’ve always seemed peripheral to what I personally want a videogame console for, so I’d imagine many others shared that sentiment. As for the games side of things, almost 13 games per console sounds more like it. THAT’S what the thing is for.
