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XBox (Games)

2 Million Xbox Live Users And Counting 46

Posted by Zonk from the gates-does-a-happy-dance dept.
Gamasutra is reporting that Xbox Live has reached the milestone of 2 Million subscribers, essentially a doubling of the service's membership in the last year. From the article: "Microsoft took the opportunity to re-iterate that Xbox Live is a universal service between both the original Xbox and the forthcoming Xbox 360, due to debut this November. Thus, gamers can move their Xbox Live memberships seamlessly from Xbox to Xbox 360, giving Microsoft an initial subscriber advantage if either Sony or Nintendo plan a more complete online service for their next-generation consoles. "
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2 Million Xbox Live Users And Counting More

2 Million Xbox Live Users And Counting

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  • Legacy? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Shadow Wrought ( 586631 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <thguorw.wodahs>> on Thursday July 21, 2005 @11:29AM (#13125360) Homepage Journal
    If the 360 isn't fully compatible with the XBox, won't this lead to some disconnect in XBox Live down the road? How long will they support folks play Halo 2 on XBox when Halo 3 is out for the 360?

    I'm guessing that part of the reason why the XBox Live user base has increased is beacuse the consoles have gone down in price. I wonder how many of those 2 mil users are planning on upgrading to a 360 right away?

    • If anything, the seamless xbox live transition between xbox and the 360 will encourage customers to switch over. Also, looking at what other people are doing will probably pressure customers into switching over. When you pop up your friends list (i have xbox live) and see everyone is "playing halo 3 on xbox 360" and it takes 30 minutes to find a matchmaking game, you're definitely want to switch over to the 360 more. If you DON'T have xbox live, you can continue to live in your little past-technology bubbl
  • This is a tremendous number of subscribers. Once the Live servers are in place the costs decrease pretty quick.

    I think the Xbox strategy is like a cable company. Small fee for the box to connect, but they make it up in service and content
    • 1. Considering the system has been running for over 2 and a half years, it's a pretty pathetic total.
      2. It's not clear whether it includes trial subscriptions.
      3. It represents less than one tenth of the Xbox user base, hardly the lynchpin of the system that MS hyped it to be.
      4. More people worldwide play online games on PS2, even though you have to buy additional peripherals and there are only a scant number of online games available.

      In the coming console generation, ALL the competing formats (including th
      • Personally I think that Microsoft still uses their current business model because it gives them control which is always something they've coveted. Do they adopt standarts that they haven't hard a part in creating? Usually not. If they do, in the case of RSS (which was posted on /. a while back) they usually piss in the broth themselves a little just to make the flavor to their liking a little more.

        Microsoft expects to dictate to you, the user, how you will use their hardware, and they expect you to pay fo

      • Yeah, more people play PS2 online. But in an environment where each company sets up their own servers, and each is set up differently, and you need accounts for each game server, and the whole thing is very fractured and ad-hoc.

        Xbox Live gives a complete, integrated system. I can play one game, see who on my friends list is playing in other games, and send game invites to them. The Xbox 360 is going to add a HELL of a lot more to the experience, also.

        Yes, there are plenty of games that offer free onlin
        • " $50 a YEAR? How much is that, really? "

          $50 more than on any other platform. Which instantly makes the system uncompetitive for MMO games, as MS have discovered.

          The larger issue is that there is no alternative route to playing online games on Xbox/360. Many third parties already have servers and infrastructure in place, and baulk at being forced to kludge their games into Microsoft's system. None of the system-level convenience features (chat, gamertags, etc) justify a subscription fee.
          • I definitely have to disagree there.

            I have one EA game - Burnout 3. It goes through Live to get onto the EA servers. And gawd, is that obnoxious. First of all, because their severs are meant only for online play, it means the rest of the game is completely Live-unaware. I can't see my friends list when I'm playing single player, and I can't get game invites. Besides, that, the setup they use for getting into games is more obnoxious and more amateur, and after playing other games on Live, I just have n

  • Where are the numbers from? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Qzukk ( 229616 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @11:29AM (#13125365) Journal
    Is it immoral Blizzard campers making money selling the Chinese subscribers they're farming? Let's talk about how all this camping and farming is affecting our economy. Clearly, duped subscribers are being used to inflate the importance of this third-rate console. What'll happen when the admins discover this and issue a rollback or worse, start just cancelling Microsoft and Blizzard accounts for participating in this hack?

  • great, but... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by almeitus ( 725445 )
    that number would be significantly reduced if they banned all the cheaters and a-holes you seem to run into on a regular basis....
  • This has to be the biggest problem. They have great infastructure, but no MMORPG. No Warcraft, no FF.., no Evercrack. This is a major slap in the face. Don't get me wrong Halo 2 ROCKS, but come on Microsoft. Wake up!

    Oh, by the way, Virtual ON on Xbox live would also Rock! enough Said!
    • Well.. I agree I actually posted more or less the same in another thread. but MMORPGs are coming to live until the x360 ships starting with FF11 and the Marvel based one.

      Lets face it the xbox as we know it is basically dead, one more year of life and thats it. No one is crazy enough to release a mmorpg for it considering that. sad but true.

    • I disagree. MMORPGs create a server load that dwarfs that of XBox Live. Plus, they involve much higher maintenance in terms of new content and administration. Very few MMOs can get by without a subscription model, and Live kinda precludes a subscription, since you're already paying for Live.

      If anything, MS could make one big, beefy MMO for Live and just accept that the admin costs of it will make it a net loss, but use it as a vehicle to get people onto Live.

      As much as I adore VOOT, V-On wouldn't be so
      • To tell you the truth, I think most people who play on Live dont really think of the subscription cost as a big deal. Sure you're paying for it, but playing on Live (with a well designed game, like Halo 2), the experience far beats anything you have on a PC. I wish more PC games take a hint from Halo 2's matchmaking service.

        Also, nothing stops MS from releasing an MMORPG that has a subscription rate, ala a reduced one. For example, instead of the regular $10-$15, you can charge $5 a month for people with

        • My opinion is that the server browser became obsolete with the release of Halo 2. The matchmaking and party system done there is just so advanced, compared to the server browser, which was state-of-the-art when Quake came out - that long ago.

          I could see server browsers being added deeper in menus, something accessible for those people who really care for playing only on a specific server. However, there needs to be a means for someone to get into games a lot more quickly and without having to pick throug
    • Oh, by the way, Virtual ON on Xbox live would also Rock! enough Said!
      Oh, it so would. But only old Virtual On, like the Oratorio Tangram era. Hitmaker/AM3 hasn't made a good Virtual On game since then.

  • A bit overplayed? (Score:4, Informative)

    by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @11:43AM (#13125556)
    According to sales figures the Xbox has sold roughly 20 million units world wide. If there are 2 million subscribers online with Xbox live simple arithmatic yields 10% of Xbox customers use their consoles online.

    While this doesn't seem like a lot, the figure is/has been growing slowly. I believe a lot of it has to do with the unvailability of high speed internet access for a good deal of customers as well as people being unwilling to pay the subscription ($50 I think) costs.

    However, 10% really isn't all that big of a number. I'm guessing that it's slightly under since there have more than likely been more than 20 million Xbox consoles sold. When Microsoft can get that number up to 30%, maybe they might have a cause for celebration.

    This just proves that Nintendo and Sony were both right for shying away from the online market during the current generation. 10% doesn't seem enough to justify the associated costs and difficulties with setting up an infrastructure that will work. Microsoft does have the advantage in that they already have one set up and it will be easy for them to apply it to their next generation console. Nintendo and Sony will almost be starting from scratch.

    I don't know how much more successful the online gaming business will be for the different companies. Each have or seem to be taking different approaches. Nintendo is offering downloadable games for their next generation consoles and is working on getting the DS online. Microsoft has a subsciption model where they handle all online gaming. Sony has generally let each company decide for themselves how to run the online portion of their games.

    I'm willing to bet that online gaming will continue to grow and probably peak at around 60% in some cases where it's free and easy to use and as low as 20% in instances where fees are associated. Given that Microsoft is offering both a silver (free) and gold (fee) subsciption to Xbox Live, it will become more difficult to project actual figures. My guess is that they will lump both together to claim a higher percentage of consumers are using Xbox Live so they can use the figure to sell more consoles. Nintendo will have trouble tracking theirs since Revolutions can probably communicate wirelessly without going through any gaming servers. Sony will just keep talking about how many Tflops the PS3 can push.

    Online gaming can be great, but let's keep plenty of good non-online games on the market as well.

    • Re:A bit overplayed? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "This just proves that Nintendo and Sony were both right for shying away from the online market during the current generation. 10% doesn't seem enough to justify the associated costs and difficulties with setting up an infrastructure that will work. Microsoft does have the advantage in that they already have one set up and it will be easy for them to apply it to their next generation console. Nintendo and Sony will almost be starting from scratch."

      Actually, Microsoft (to a certain extent) didn't have to st
      • I think the bigger advantage for Microsoft in this case is the fact they have a generation's worth of head start. They already HAVE an online system, they've already discovered some unanticipated issues to resolve in the next version of Live, and they've got a whole team of people working on Live who also play regularly (I know, cause I've played with them a lot), so have firsthand experience with what can be improved and what works.

        Sony and Nintendo don't have that experience, so they'll need to make som
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:A bit overplayed? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by badasscat ( 563442 )
      However, 10% really isn't all that big of a number.

      I agree. I'd also like to know how many of that 10% are active Live users. I remember another number MS trumpeted when Halo 2 was fairly new that, if you also did the arithmetic, suggested only 9% of Halo 2 owners had ever taken the game online, and only a tiny percentage were online at any given time.

      Myself, I let my XBL subscription lapse last year. I just got annoyed with all the teen and pre-teen idiots floating around, and found that the level of
      • I think that Nintendo's wireless strategy and a game like Animal Crossing for the Revolution could push up to 60% of users "online"

        Of course this leaves a little bit up to interpretation. 60% of users won't be connecting to some type of server that Nintendo sets up, but 60% of users may communicate wirelessly with another Revolution console within range of whatever WiFi network is set up.

        This doesn't constitute what many people would normally consider going online with a game, but it still accomplishes

    • Nicely worded, but you don't make any sense.

      Nintendo and Sony were right: Well, if MS was wrong, then they still wouldn't be doing the online thing. Clearly, Live showed that there is a market for online consoles and now they are following suit. Listen, 10% is a pretty significant number for something that has never been online before. But your actual percentage can be skewed by people who have more than one x-box, or one that broke and got a new one, or people just bought them to hack linux on them (o
      • Listen, 10% is a pretty significant number for something that has never been online before.

        Dreamcast.

        The overall percentage of Nintendo's marketshare is less than Sony and MS (note overall).

        Nintendo is barely behind MS in the worldwide home console numbers. Include all current generation platforms, and Nintendo is #1.

        If there were 12 users of Xbox live, the thing is a success as long as MS is turning a profit.

        XBOX? Profit? That's funny!
    • Sony has generally let each company decide for themselves how to run the online portion of their games.

      Actually, thats because they knew it was going to fail. Mostly because it was their fault.

      When the PS2 launched the network adaptor, the hardware was already horribly outdated, there was no centralized servers (bad lag), and no fancy addition that PC users didn't have/already had (not including the mouse+keyboard argument). Fast forward to the hard drive. HORRIBLY outdated hardware, games are not allowed

      • Actually, quite a few games on XBOX live don't use a "centralized" server. Take Halo 2 for example, it picks a random host before each game. As far as I know the only dedicated server you're going to get is an XBOX that someone as hooked up to live acting as a server, but you can't play on that same XBOX. With that being said I think MS's online model is WAY better than what Sony offered simply becuase you can view friends across ALL XBOX live games. And to all those people who claim online is not the n
    • This just proves that Nintendo and Sony were both right for shying away from the online market during the current generation. 10% doesn't seem enough to justify the associated costs and difficulties with setting up an infrastructure that will work

      Assuming that all those 2 million players subscribe for just one year at $50, that's $100 million. The "assocaiated costs" would be, maybe, $5 million. You're telling me that Sony and Nintendo were right for not even trying to get a part of that $95 million pot?

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