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Xbox Live Hits 24 Million Downloads 68

Thanks to the 'E3 at Home' initiative, Xbox Live has served up 24 million pieces of content, and connected 1.5 million gamers. From the article: "Over 600 terabytes of data were transferred over the network during the week, a figure which represents 30 times more data than is found in all the printed material in the US Library of Congress, according to Microsoft games boss Peter Moore, who thankfully did not go on to provide the standard British comparison of telling us how many double decker buses it equates to."
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Xbox Live Hits 24 Million Downloads

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  • How much of that was game content, and how much were system "upgrades" out to find and punish those nasty, evil, wicked console modders?
    • Re:Question (Score:3, Insightful)

      by linvir ( 970218 )
      From your tone, you seem to be against this. Back when I was playing Halo 2 on Live, modders were the most hated adversary you could meet. I remember a few members of my clan being disgraced and kicked out for doing it. So for the most part, anything that hurts modders is welcomed by players.
      • Re:Question (Score:3, Interesting)

        I think there's a fair number of people who use mods for semi-legitimate uses (stuff like emulators, media players etc.)[1], or legitimate stuff like Linux. Microsoft doesn't particularly want people doing these things on the Xbox, so they refuse them entry to their super fun happy club.

        Of course the people who used mods to cheat at Halo are probably great for MS PR, as Halo players can equate "mod" with "stinking cheater". It's partly Bungie's fault anyway, data on the Xbox HD was insecure for ages before
        • Heh, you're preaching to the born again nutter in the front row of the congregation. I have a modded Xbox, and I used it for Xbox Live for ages. I was one of the good boys, and turned it off (the length of the power button press determines if it's on or off) for Live, but lived in fear of one of them finally getting a clue and checking for the obvious basic files that would be a sign of mods.

          Whenever you tell someone that you've got a modded box on Live, you have to follow it up with "But I'm not a modder"

      • I was referring to people who mod their consoles for stuff like Linux, Media Center, or even to play homebrewn or otherwise (cough) unsigned games. I'm all for that, as someone who enjoys emulation and tinkering.

        Modding a game in order to cheat at online play is a whole other ball of wax, and as someone who once tried to get into "Diablo" I'm with you 100% on how much that needs punishing.

      • Maybe I played with the wrong people, but nobody on Halo 2 on Live had heard of /. Reads /., plays Halo 2, what is your gamertag?
        • It was capicu [bungie.net], but I haven't been online since September last year. At some point the magic just died for me, and when I moved it wasn't worth jumping through all the (ISP) hoops to get my Xbox online. Turns out my new connection was too laggy anyway.

          Looking at those stats, it seems I had one last binge [bungie.net] of Team Snipers before I left. A nice way to say goodbye.

          I'd noticed that noone on there had heard of Slashdot too. It was a weird little group of people. Lots of Microsoft fanboys in there, though a lot of

    • This is talking about stuff like trailers, demoes and the like, not software updates. Have Microsoft been any more vindictive about mods than banning consoles from Xbox Live anyway? (I personally don't mind if Microsoft don't want modded consoles on Xbox Live, that's up to them, it's their service, they can set the rules).

      Getting a load of downloads of free content like demos and trailers is nice, but I wonder how this compares to stuff like avatars and themes that they want people to pay for. Is their micr
      • Re:Question (Score:3, Interesting)

        by bigman2003 ( 671309 )
        According to Major Nelson ( http://majornelson.com/ [majornelson.com] ) the Oblivion horse armor sold ridiculously well.

        Even Major Nelson was telling people not to buy it- that it was a ripoff. I'm not an Oblivion fan, but if I were, I am sure that I would have downloaded the armor. The reason I would have downloaded it is that the system makes it so damn easy to buy stuff, that people think, "Yeah, sure, why not?"

        I think the micropayment thing is going well. I've spent (pissed away) about $100 on different things like XB
    • I'm sure at least 25% of it is people downloading the DOAXBV2 trailer from E3.

      BOOBIES!
  • It may be 30x more then the LOC, but how many VW Bugs would it take if they were full of backup tapes?
    • I don't know, but since the transfer medium you were trying to think of is a station wagon, not a VW Bug, I don't see what it matters.
      • My monnocle almost fell out as I saw your snide remarque!

        If you would have been reading all the latest quantity meassurement journals, you would have known that recently it has been discovered that if you mate 3 VW Bugs, you will end up with precisely one wagon.

        The conversion for 2 VW Bugs into a wagon is QED, and I will leave it as an exercise for the reader.

  • That's 600 terabytes of sitting, waiting for downloads to complete instead of using the system. That dashboard upgrade better show up pretty soon.
  • by Stuart Gibson ( 544632 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @02:15PM (#15367379) Homepage
    Microsoft have really impressed me with XBox Live and have used it to really deliver on the 360, so much so that, even as a die hard Nintendo Whore I'm picking up a 360 next week (Oblivion swung me over the edge).

    I'll still be getting a Wii, but I think that (and a lot of gamers seem to agree) the difference in titles and experience make two consoles justifiable this time round (first time ever for me).

    MS have made a lot of smart moves and deserve to keep a number two position this time round; just behind Nintendo :) Sony are in for a bumpy ride.
    • Oblivion is amazing. check it out in HD with surround sound. I've lost my wife for the last three weeks due to that game.

      I'm actually not sure about the PS3. Xbox is here now and it works great. Sure we all want more software, but the 30 or so titles they have out is enough for a start.

      I'm curious how the PS3 looks. I have a 1080i Sony and the xbox rocks.

  • What ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by LordKaT ( 619540 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @02:16PM (#15367391) Homepage Journal
    24 million? What an odd number to be celebrating.
  • Aha! So, we finally have a figure for the elusive LoC unit. It turns out 1 LoC = 20 terabytes. Now, if only Google would add this to its unit conversion feature.
  • LoC (Score:4, Funny)

    by thefirelane ( 586885 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @02:33PM (#15367569)
    Everyone knows 1 Library of Congress is a standard unit of measurment
  • P2P savings (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 9mm Censor ( 705379 ) * on Friday May 19, 2006 @02:49PM (#15367694) Homepage
    Imagine the savings from a P2P network for that.
    • I seriously doubt any gamer would knowingly give upstream bandwidth when they're trying to play a game that requires low latency. Perhaps if it were P2P only for the duration that you are actually downloading (or until you notice and press A).

      Doesn't Blizzard's WoW patching model work similar to this (shares until you hit complete and start the patch process)?

  • I wonder how this compares to the amount of data that is transferred via the trackers that a site like empornium or pirate bay indexes? That would be a comparison figure I'd like to see.
  • I can't wait for the 25 million announcement!
  • Silver or Gold? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Sorry, but how many of them are Gold subscribers? And did they just download the free stuff, or did they actually buy?
    The original Xbox had something like a 10% Live subscription rate, it would be nice to know how many 360 gamers are converting their Silver subscription into Gold...
  • So how many of the target audience have actually seen the extent of printed material in the LoC to actually say "Wow!! THAT much??"
  • by e03179 ( 578506 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @03:36PM (#15368076) Homepage
    I bet they'd have 40 million downloads if the user interface was easier to use. Sitting there waiting for a slow download of a 100Mb file is discouraging. It's hard for them to keep be on the download screen. I'd rather quit of the download and do something. That's why I'm using my 360 anyway...to be entertained - not to watch a slow progress bar.
    • by Jarlsberg ( 643324 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @04:01PM (#15368271) Journal
      This is apparently being adressed, so hopefully we'll see this being sorted soon. I downloaded the Tomb Raider Legends demo recently, and while I'm happy you can do this finally, I had go do something else for the hour it took to download (on a 4MB connection no less - the download service is obviously capped).
    • Has something changed recently? I had the 360 for about a week 1 month ago, and was downloading 1 gig demos in 10-15 minutes.
      • Could just be my region. I'm in Norway, but for all I know the MS download server might in a central hub in Germany. (Which, incidentally, is where they're sending my 6 month old Xbox 360 which just died a few days ago.)
  • by nick_davison ( 217681 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @05:01PM (#15368742)
    "Over 600 terabytes of data were transferred over the network during the week, a figure which represents 30 times more data than is found in all the printed material in the US Library of Congress, according to Microsoft games boss Peter Moore, who thankfully did not go on to provide the standard British comparison of telling us how many double decker buses it equates to."

    Ignoring that the library of congress figure considers text strings only with no consideration of the detail stored in images printed at however many hundred dpi whereas Microsoft Live's downloads contain 600 terabytes of image and video files plus the word "l33t"

    Compared on like terms, either:

    Microsoft have offered 600 terabytes of data in all forms whereas the library of congress contains billions of times that once you consider the information needed to describe the images in the books, the paper used, the binding, font choices, fading of inks, etc.

    or

    The library of congress has around 20 terabytes worth of laregely uniquely ordererd text strings whereas Microsoft have downloaded the same four bytes that reconstruct to "l33t" a few million times.

    Microsoft's spokesperson then went on to compare the Microsoft XBox 360 to having several hundred times the power of a Ferrari which he points out only has a few relatively simple processors in it.
    • by LKM ( 227954 )

      He's comparing "stored data" to "retreived data". That's a bit of a meaningless comparison.

  • Typical Slashdot response ( bear in mind I love slashdot but god there are a lot of cynics ): You mean M$ sending patches for a POS system running a POS OS, I hope M$ fails. They produce nothing but garbage, forget things that they actually create instead of talking about, forget that they brought the everyday pc to the everyday person. Instead M$ is all that is evil and everything they make is awful. I just bought a 360 and wasn't a big fan of the original, I think the 360 is a very cool console, and LI
    • To tell ya the truth, we're just pissed because we can be. We're annoyed at having to fix the computers of friends and reletives that are constantly infected with spyware, etc. We're pissed at the lack of commercial software for our OS of choice. There are many reasons for the saltyness of the average slashdotter.
      • That's fair enough I understand that Windows as much as any other OS has it's shortcomings don't worry about that. However is Linux was the mainstream OS chances are we'd all be removing spyware from our friends'/families' pcs just the same. All I'm saying is that clearly there are areas that each OS has to improve but I firmly believe that MS did a great job with the 360 and it really upsets me and discourages me from reading comments below articles on /. because everyone is such a naysayer. To the poin
  • Which hit 50 million ages ago in 2005. Don't try and impress us with security update download information. Hype up the xbox360 y'all!

    If you bought one, lol for you then. I am going to be burning up your CPU with my cell.

    'nuff said

  • I assumed this!

Variables don't; constants aren't.

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