Gold subs spend 3 hours a day on XBL

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 12 November, 2010

40% of that spent on non-gaming services.

Gold subscribers spend on average three hours a day on Xbox Live, Microsoft has claimed.

40 per cent of that time was spent using non-gaming services such as Last.fm, Dennis Durkin, COO and CFO of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business, told the BMO Capital Markets Annual Digital Entertainment Conference (as reported by Joystiq).

More than half of Xbox Live's 25 million users are paying subscribers. "Those are very, very engaged customers, which is a good business," Durkin said.

Somewhat surprisingly, Xbox Live's digital transactions business is bigger than its subscriptions business.

Over the last 18 months Microsoft has added a raft of features to Xbox Live designed to broaden the Xbox 360's appeal.

There's Zune, Sky, Twitter, Facebook and other gubbins to get your non-gaming mitts dirty with.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (15) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • thes #1 2 years ago

    Interesting. That statement has made made up my mind, though - now I'm going to let my Gold membership expire, seeing as I barely use it.

    Thanks, Dennis Durkin, COO and CFO of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business - you just saved me a sub!

  • citizenHUNTER #2 2 years ago

    The Twitter and Facebook and even the Last FM segments all seem rather disparate and rather clumsy I thought. Feels like they're there mainly to tick a box or two of features, but aren't actually features that are very easy to use. With Last FM you really should be able to listen in the background for example.I just could not justify the £5 a month I was spending on XBL since I don't actually play any games online enough to warrant it. Without that feature the subscription is pretty weak I think, but of course the online play really is the main reason people pay so much so I won't argue with that, but for me personally I couldn't justify it.

  • el_pollo_diablo #3 2 years ago

    I didn't know Dennis Durkin was a non-gaming service.

  • Sharzam #4 2 years ago

    Not too surprised by any of these numbers, for myself i have Gold not because all the extra features but because some evenings i might want to actually you know, play a game online.

    Regards to those extras, facebook is faster and easier on my laptop and phone so dont use on the xbox however the last.fm is really useful when have friends around if just want a bit of music and don't care what.

    And it stands to reason that more use DD on Live than say PSN because if your active on Xbox you will probably be fully aware of live and the marketplace as a lot of the Xbox features are tied to live but i know plenty of people with a PS3 who simple just don't use online features so wouldn't be aware of what's in the PSN.

  • Lexx87 #5 2 years ago

    Watch many movies on Sky Player through it and I would say I spend 3 hours + a night on there. In the week anyway!

  • RodHull #6 2 years ago

    I'm presuming that's in the US because there's little of interest on there for UK users without a Sky subscription.

  • gjgjg #7 2 years ago

    How much of theat time is spent 'Idle' or 'Dashboard'?

    Does anyone know if it's possible to get the US XBL services in EU via false IP or something? I would spend more time on those things, but the Irish version is useless (sky sucks;p)
    Edited by gjgjg at 12/11/10 @ 10:52

  • Toothball #8 2 years ago

    I spend around three hours on the Xbox most nights, and almost zero of that is on the non-gaming services. I sometimes watch bits on Inside Xbox, but I have my PC plugged into my TV for when I want to do anything that isn't gaming.

  • mkreku #9 2 years ago

    I only have a Silver account, and boy does it feel empty for me. I've watched The Guild and that's it. Compared to my cousin's wealth of options on his "Silver account" PS3, it's almost embarrassing.

    When he buys a game, he just plays it. When I buy a game, I have to pay a subscription to Microsoft to play it. It annoys me to no end.

  • nuanimal #10 2 years ago

    They are watching me... I wonder if they they know the file names of WMV files I play on the 360 too :o(

  • Emmit_Assassin #11 2 years ago

    I thought Activision said people only bought Gold for CoD?

    @nuanimal - Me too.
    Edited by Emmit_Assassin at 12/11/10 @ 11:36

  • Vortex808 #12 2 years ago

    CitizenHUNTER, how on earth were you paying £60 a year for gold? Or did you mean 5 EUR a month?

    It's about £30 from numerous retailers and only £40 from microsoft! It costs me about £2-odd a month, that's less than a pint in the local!

  • metalangel #13 2 years ago

    The Last.FM thing is my fault. It tends to get turned on about 5pm or so when dinner preparation starts, and is often still running at 9pm.

    Minus that bastard 'you still there? you've been gone a while, do you want to continue using Last.FM?' message that, even if you say yes, SKIPS TO THE NEXT SONG.

  • KrazyFace #14 2 years ago

    @Sharzam, "i know plenty of people with a PS3 who simple just don't use online features so wouldn't be aware of what's in the PSN." That just seems weird to me! There are around 40million PS3s in the world and you don't know anyone who uses its online features!?

    They're either too poor to afford an internet connection, or they found their PS3s in a cereal box, yes?

    Either way, having to pay to play is just master-craftsman-stupidity to me, no offence.

  • stegabba #15 2 years ago

    if you can afford to buy a xbox you can afford to play it online