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NEWS

One In Five Gamers Is A Subscriber

Tom Ivan's picture

By Tom Ivan

June 2, 2009

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One fifth of game players are currently committed to a gaming subscription of one form or another.

That’s according to US market research firm the NPD Group, which pointed to Xbox Live Gold membership, online rental services and MMO subscriptions as examples in its Entertainment Trends in America report.

NPD said that the total games subscription market grew by 18 percent in terms of subscriber numbers between the first quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009, with the number of US Xbox Live Gold subscribers rising 24 percent during the period.

The firm said that 18 percent of Xbox Live Gold subscribers regularly download digitally from Xbox Live Arcade, while ten percent of PS3 users are said to regularly download titles from the PlayStation Network.

Additionally, NPD’s Online Gaming 2009 report found that 17 percent of PC games purchased were digitally downloaded, while Bigfishgames, Steam and RealArcade accounted for over 56 percent of PC digital games sold between July and December 2008.

ArronC07's picture
On June 2nd ArronC07 said:

and this finally puts to bed the myth that more people pay for XBOX than don't. I think it's time MS started doing what everyone else does and start a policy of non-charging for services you can for free everywhere else.

Alex Wiltshire's picture
On June 2nd Alex Wiltshire said:

Note that the statistic refers to all gaming subscriptions, from Xbox Live and PSN to World Of Warcraft.

NickgamertagO1's picture
On June 2nd NickgamertagO1 said:

Oops, misred that. I guess the big XBL card made me think it was just MS. If the percentage represents multiple formats, then it's impossible to break it down. The raios can be totally different. There could be say 40% of the 30 million 360 owners online, but out of the total number of people who game (say 100 million) out of that number only 20 million total game. So, we're just as in the dark as we were before when it comes to breaking down active subscribers (it's free for Sony, but from what I understand anyone can create a PSN account, you don't even have to have a PS3 to do it which muddles the numbers).

NickgamertagO1's picture
On June 2nd NickgamertagO1 said:

So...as of this writing there's only 6 million gold subscribers? So, 14 million would then be free silver account holders? 6 million paid subscribers isn't bad I guess. 300 million bucks a year is nothing to sneeze at. ($50.00 annual fee X 6 million subscribers).