One New Member Every Second During Holiday Season 2009; More Than 39 Million Xbox 360’s Worldwide

January 7, 2010 – During their keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas yesterday, Microsoft announced that there 20 million people worldwide using the Xbox Live service. In addition, they announced that “nearly 10 million people have logged into Xbox Live’s nongaming applications.” These non-gaming applications, such as Facebook, Netflix, Twitter and Zune equate to 50% of the Xbox Live audience. In addition, using the services requires having a Gold Xbox Live account, meaning that at least half of Xbox Live’s users pay for the service from Microsoft.

Microsoft also announced that the final week of the holiday season was the busiest in Xbox Live history. “Between Christmas and New Years Day, Xbox Live experienced its busiest week ever, adding a new member every second and a record of more than 2.2 million concurrent members online.”

Finally, amongst all the numbers regarding Xbox Live, Microsoft also revealed that there are now 39 million Xbox 360 consoles around the world and that, on those consoles, 500 million games have been sold. That equates to “$20 billion spent in retail.”

The news came after Sony’s CES press event, in which they announced that they had sold 1.7 million Playstation 3’s in North America during the last quarter of 2009 and that the PSN has 38 million registered users.

Source: Joystiq