Xbox Live Gold is not good value, and it is holding the 360 back

[ameratsu]

Yup, I'm right.

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-leaked-documents-shed-light-on-microsofts-xbox-live-subscriber-stats/

That figure you quoted, but that I can't find cited anywhere (~15m), is probably an approximate total of Xbox Live accounts. The last number I could find said 10m, but that was early 2008, so it's surely higher by now. According to the leaked documents, 60% of Xbox live users in the US and 56% of Xbox live users abroad have paid accounts. You went wrong by assuming every Xbox Live user has a paid account.