Microsoft Will Focus Primarily On Xbox Live Usership, Not Console Shipments

[Zanten]

Kind of surprised this was a thing they could do. o.O That being said, since they clearly can, I'm not surprised that they did. Whatever hardware number they pulled out, be is Xbox One or both it and the 360 combined, it was pretty much inevitable that Sony's announced figure would be substantially bigger, which would naturally lead to another string of articles, etc, etc, comparing the sales performance of the two. By just foregoing on a number entirely, all that can really be said with certainly is 'Yeah, Sony Shipped More,' but with no context or basis for comparison, there won't be the usual string of discussions comparing it to the PS4, to the 360, etc, etc, and it'll help push sales comparisons talk from more public perception, and into the more interested circles.

Still, even with that in mind, their specific use of ALL Live Accounts active in the last month seems like an odd one, as it's no more representative of the install base than console sales. (Let's face it, it's substantially less so. =P ) Lumping Gold and Silver together means they're not even talking about subscription revenue. I guess the only way it really makes sense is if they're referring to their success as an advertising platform, since any account that goes online is presumably going to be exposed to advertisements?

Anyyyyway, sucks for actually tracking the rate the console is moving, (at this point I was more interested in how it fared compared to its predecessor, though,) any press statements Microsoft releases are likely to be less than useless in that regard if they're phrased like 'Approaching ten million shipped' was. So I guess I'll just have to whet my appetite on seeing how their online community progresses.

...although if they start changing that metric too, ("Live accounts active for the last two months!") then they can sod off. -_-