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The Xbox Live service has topped six million members worldwide, Microsoft has announced - demonstrating that the service is growing even faster than the company itself predicted.

Last year at E3, Microsoft pledged that it would double the subscriber base of Xbox Live from three million users to six million by the end of June 2007 - a milestone it has now reached four months ahead of schedule.

To mark hitting six million users on the service, Microsoft has released an update on key statistics related to Xbox Live - revealing that as well as the 2.3 biillion hours spent playing games on the service since its launch in 2002, Live is also coming into its own as a communication system, with over 2,000,000 voice and text messages sent between users every day.

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Good stuff, and not just for MS. This is good proof for Sony and Nintendo that online services are viable, valuable, and in demand. Hopefully MS puts that revenue to good use and start forging even deeper paths into what the online community could become. Could it be, the dawning of a new age...................? *queue cheesy music and pan camera into the sky*

I wonder now will Nintendo see how popular online gaming is on consoles!! I doubt it! They are too busy giving us shite like the everybody votes channel to even consider giving us a decent online service!

I bet MS will hit over 10 mill by the end of 07

I bet MS will hit over 10 mill by the end of 07

Possible, especially when you consider when Halo 3 releases anyone who has broadband and a 360 but not LIVE will subscribe.

Hmmn, the Wii has problems on line though - If I was a 3rd party developer I wouldnt even attempt a port to that system as the client side network runtime would have to be completely re-written for a low spec processor - so not just graphics / playability being re-scaled, but the whole concept of how developers could possible work with Nintendo on this completely baffles me.

I suppose this is why there is a delay to the end of the year as they are trying to shovel something together. The online experience will be distinctly last gen (give or take controllers)

As for the PS3 / 360 its a case of onwards and upwards. I wish I knew how many PS3' s there were actively online and downloading data so we could work out if they were beginnign to close the gap - well chasm, gorge, gulf, ocean, galaxy whatever..

If XBL has six million subcribers it just means six million people are stupid fucks.

Evil did you sell your 360? what do you think of ps3 online compared?

If XBL has six million subcribers it just means six million people are stupid fucks.

mmhmm and uh... what exactly is sony offering for online right now?

mmhmm and uh... what exactly is sony offering for online right now?

I don' t think he mentioned anything about Sony. His comment was limited to what he thinks of XBL.

How many of the 6million or 60% are the free trial brigade? I would hazard a guess that you can take another 10-15% of that figure for the free trialists, so that would roughly work out to be 4.5 million fully fledged subscribers.

How many of the 6million or 60% are the free trial brigade? I would hazard a guess that you can take another 10-15% of that figure for the free trialists, so that would roughly work out to be 4.5 million fully fledged subscribers.

Im not sure how that works. But the free trials for 360 are only 2 days, so i doubt there would be 1.5 mil that are using it. And original xbox, with the 2 months i didnt think there were many left, but im sure bridgers have other ways of getting them. Do people still actually care about bridging and crap on halo 2?

I haven' t even thought of any console exclusive game that I would want to play hardcore online. Online play on consoles is dead until they can make games that make people get off their PCs and play online on consoles, XBL means nothing when there is about 2 games that anyone actually wants to play.

Halo 2
Gears of War
Rainbow Six Vegas
Call of Duty 3
Crackdown
Lost Planet
Saint' s Row
Battlefield 2: Modern Combat

and what should I be peeing myself over on the PC again?