Xbox UK chief doesn't believe Sony's 20m PSN figure

[outlawauron]

KylieDog said:

NightAntilli said:

I doubt there are only 17 million Live IDs... It's very realistic though to have 17 million ACTIVE xbox Live users, which means, they either have gold and play online, or they either use netflix, or other stuff like that. Sony's numbers are far from realistic though if you base it on PS3 only (not PSP), since they just reached 20 million sold consoles. That would mean, that every single one of them should be active online, and i doubt that's the case....

There are good reasons why more PS3s would go online.  The PS3 is an expensive console for one, the type of people buying it are probably more likely to have internet access, and since the PSN service is free also are very likely to create an account.

 

The 360 however is a lot cheaper, so more less wealthy people are likely to be buying it.  Given the arcade SKU makes up a majority of 360 sales this supports the less wealthy claim (as opposed to liking the 360 more as an example).  I would bet that less 360 owners have internet access than PS3 owners, which reduces the number of possible accounts, they are less likely to want to pay to play online if they go for cheap options, reducing the number of accounts more, then there is the fact that to make use of a lot of XBL options the arcade SKU isn't really good enough due to lack of memory that the pro/elite SKUs have, even further reducing numbers.

 

 

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On topic, both PS3 and 360 accounts numbers are crap anyway.  The PSN combines PS3 and PSP numbers and many people have multiple acconts for different regions of PSN store.  XBL has a bunch of accounts created with free 3 day new account trials and such that people have various uses for and windows accounts are included in the number, who knows if silver accounts are counted or not.

We know silver accounts are counted and whatever active Xbox Live (the original xbox) accounts are left still playing Halo 2.