That used to be around 30-40 million if I am not mistaken.

Yeah this was up over 30 million a few years ago..

Yah... Except it was 30 million "accounts"...
And not gold. But nice try, I totaly understand what you are triyng to do here :)

i've let mine expire this year and had no reason to renew it since I got busy with the 3DS and Wii U. Just picked up a xbone for forza horizon 2 so going to grab gold again.

Also a buddy of mine has had his xbox 360 for around 3 years and never had it connected to the internet.

It was accounts in general (including silvers). I expect this number to be way higher today. Even PSN had 60 million (again, non paying) at some point.
17 million paying users is huge I think.

Should be pretty low right now compared to maybe one or two years ago. Many wait to buy a new console and don't pay for their old one right now. Sales of games on 360 were are also not very impressive the last months so that many seam to be in a transition phase right now where they reduced their gaming time a lot until they get a new console.  To renew 3 or even 12 months accounts when you don't play atm would be just stupid. 

I also think that many who play games like CoD or Fifa pay for 3 months and after that time they wait until the next game of that franchise releases . If he took a number from the last months it should be lower as it will be starting with Destiny and then for the next maybe 6 months. There was just no big reason to pay for online gaming on consoles the last months but now with Destny, Fifa and so on it's beginning again to make sense for many.

Sure, these 3 months subs bring less money but we can't expect that average Joe will pay for Xbox live or PS+ every single day in a year if he only wants to play games online for a few weeks or months which release between September and November. 

PS+ did obviously grow a lot since nobody needed to pay for it on PS3 to play online but it makes sense to me that Xbox live subs did shrink the last year or even years with 2014 and 2013. 

=p  Everybody got it?

It seems obvious that this number will drop precipitously over time. Iow, I believe that 360 only users will drop faster than XBO sales can match YOY.

What are core gamers BeElite? And how many PS4 users are core gamers?  

less than I thought. About twice the plus subscribers. Plus should overtake it with the PS4 domination