Xbox Live More Popular than iTunes?

Microsoft announced this morning that they'd reached 10 Million downloads with the new Xbox Live service, a download rate even faster than the iTunes Music Store. From the Gamespot article: "The tech giant also revealed that more content for Xbox Live is on the way. The company confirmed that new achievements and automobiles will be available for Project Gotham Racing 3, new multiplayer maps are headed to Perfect Dark Zero, and an online cooperative mode for Kameo: Elements of Power will be ready soon. The company did not say whether said downloads would be free or, as is more likely, come at a price."

Comments

Yay inflammatory titles

[Ryan J. Evans]

Talk to me when XBL has a billion downloads...

Apple iTunes downloads passes 1 billion songs

(Disclaimer: I use and like both itunes and XBL, but saying that something that just hit 10m downloads is more popular than something that just passed 1b is ridiculous.)

Re:Yay inflammatory titles

[networkBoy]

Kinda wondering how you got that offtopic mod....

anyway, I think that the rate of the curve should be given some review when determining popularity.
If iTunes has a flat rate of growth and XBL has this monster quadratic or log curve showing up then the argument may be valid. Nevermind that I really do agree with you.
-nB

Just thought about this: all numbers should be normalized against subscriber base. The base its self should be a weight.
-nB

Re:Yay inflammatory titles

[Rapter09]

Hm. I don't think you get the point. I believe the whole thing is saying that XBL has reached 10m downloads faster than iTunes reached 10m. Does not necessarily mean that XBL is more popular iTunes, or vice-versa, but the growth rate is currently higher than iTunes was at it's particular stage of life.

Re:Yay inflammatory titles

[Ryan J. Evans]

Actually, I get what they're saying just fine. I just don't think their statement has any real value. Even if we ignore the fact that comparing total downloads between XBL and iTunes isn't relevant, and we ignore the fact that XBL didn't hit 10m any faster, there's still the fact that these are two network services started approximately 4 years apart after a great deal of consumer training done on the part of apple and others. Hitting 10m at the 4 month mark simply doesn't have the same impact as it did 4 years ago.

Re:Yay inflammatory titles

[Anonymous Coward]

-1?

C'mon it's funny! Note the irony "Yay inflammatory titles"

Re:Yay inflammatory titles

[moo083]

That is also not a comparison that means anything though. At this stage in the iTunes Music Store's life, it was only out for Mac. This means the adoption rate was very low. Comparing XBL to iTunes right after it released iTunes for Windows would be a better comparison although it still doesn't really mean anything.

Re:Yay inflammatory titles

[RatPh!nk]

Talk to me when XBL has a billion downloads... Apple iTunes downloads passes 1 billion songs (Disclaimer: I use and like both itunes and XBL, but saying that something that just hit 10m downloads is more popular than something that just passed 1b is ridiculous.)

And not only that, talk to me when those 1 billion downloads are paid downloads. AFAIK, Apple only counts the stuff they sell as a download, but I am not 100%.

Re:Yay inflammatory titles

[MustardMan]

I was going to say the exact same thing...

I think this might possibly be the shittiest article I've EVER read on slashdot.

And I was here during the Jon Katz years *shudder*

Re:Yay inflammatory titles

[Dajur]

Well ... it makes a difference because itunes it targeted at a more "general" market that XBL.

Re:Yay inflammatory titles

[j.bellone]

How does that not compare to the current version of Xbox Live only being out for the Xbox 360? Which, unless something happened in the last 24 hours, is in very limited supply.

Re:Yay inflammatory titles

[KingArthur10]

iTMS was also Mac only for the first number of months. No shit it didn't reach 10m as quickly, the user base was very small. As soon as it opened to the Windows world, things started to take off.

Re:Yay inflammatory titles

[Worminater]

So far in this stage of its life; XBL has only been available to Xbox customers. Thus we wait till XBL comes out for Revolution, PS3, and possibly PC before a true comparison.

honest

Re:Yay inflammatory titles

[moo083]

Thus, since XBL will never come out for any of that, it shows that it is just a dumb comparison to begin with. /. editors? Where are you now?

Misleading title

[iced_773]

One thing cannot be compared to an unrelated thing. XBox Live is for gaming, while iTunes is for music (and video) downloads. The title should read:

Gaming More Popular than Music Downloads

Now I'll go read the summary. ;)

Re:Misleading title

[BewireNomali]

The results are skewed. It's still way easy to get free current music. It's more difficult to get free current games/mods,etc for the XBox. XBox Live is in the situation where it is the only provider of the content people are downloading. It's an enviable position if you're XBox Live execs.

Music is infinitely more popular than gaming though - for the obvious reasons. It's a poor comparison.

However, XBox Live is positioning itself to be a content provider to the home. They can easily distribute music now - and core gaming and music demos by and large overlap. I didn't read the article, but this is probably where they're headed.

Re:Misleading title

[SetupWeasel]

It's an enviable position if you're XBox Live execs.

Enviable? I've got a hunch that this is mostly empty bandwidth. XBOX execs are very good at releasing impressive numbers, but very bad at earning a cold hard profit. If XBOX were ever to earn any achievement of note, you will hear them shouting from the heavens, and you certainly won't see announcements about it as blatantly ambiguous as this.

Apples to Oranges

[fonos]

Uhm, you're comparing how many downloads a big company gets when they offer new maps and stuff for free, to songs that you purchase for 99 cents a piece. It seems like you're comparing apples to oranges.

Re:Apples to Oranges

[interiot]

Well, some of the XBL downloads are for $5-10 games, and for paid themes/icons/etc. But yes, it would be nice if the press release noted the number of paid downloads, rather than lumping free downloads (maps, preview games, movie trailers) into the number. (though large companies are notoriously unwilling to give out numbers that would give others a peek into the financials of a product)

Re:Apples to Oranges

[Anonymous Coward]

Many Xbox Live Marketplace downloads COST money. (I can't believe I am arguing with that as a positive point..) Most of the downloads costing between $4 and $8.

Of course many of the downloads are free, and I would only be guessing if I threw out a percentage of free/purchase. (Geometry Wars had a 'buy through' percentage of about 35% but I believe that is by far the highest)

But these downloads are far from 'new maps and stuff for free'. This is real live commerce with a price and everything.

Re:Apples to Oranges

[Anonymous Coward]

More like trying to compare Apple's Store to Microsoft's Lemon. Orange you glad my puns are horrible?

Re:Apples to Oranges

[FatMacDaddy]

Hey, if they can say that 1 billion and 10 million are comparable, why stop the invalid comparisions there?

Re:Apples to Oranges

[moochfish]

Actually, it's Apples to Microsofts.

Re:Apples to Oranges

[carlmenezes]

True. For that matter, take ONE single game - Wolfenstein Enemy Territory. As of now, the player count is past the 500 million mark and that is for ONE free game.

Re:Apples to Oranges

[Schitzoflink]

I'm berry glad

Re:Apples to Oranges

[sonamchauhan]

1/6th of humanity plays that game?

Re:Apples to Oranges

[oneils]

wouldn't it be 1/16th? Still, pretty impressive. ;)

Re:Apples to Oranges

[sonamchauhan]

:) yes, i slipped up too. thought population was 3 billion instead of 6 billion.

Hmmm.. it's 6.5 billion now according to http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html

So it's 1/13th. :)

Re:Apples to Oranges

[oneils]

Lol, I thought for sure we were at 8 billion now. I guess what I always hear is "Oh no!!!! We'll reach 8B by 20xx! But 500 million for W:ET? Sounds farfetched...

Only one wait to find out...

[__aaclcg7560]

Apple should offer video games through iTunes to see if it's more popular than Xbox Live. Of course, I think Ballmer will hurl a building or two if Apple can one billion games downloaded. :P

Co-op

[Anonymous Coward]

Online co-op for Kameo has me really excited. I was a little leary of paying for xbox live, but it really a better value than the average pc mmo monthly fee.

misleading

[suspected]

This article is the definition of misleading

By all the gods of geeks...

[ChrisKnight]

...that was the most useless and nonsensical Slashdot headline I have ever seen.

-Chris

Re:By all the gods of geeks...

[tezbobobo]

Alright, the bar is set. Here we go Taco...

same as iTunes

[morcheeba]

The XBOX360 has been out for 4 months now -- that's the same amount of time it took iTunes to sell 10 million songs. But, Xbox has been released world-wide -- at that time, iTunes hadn't launched in europe yet and was only available to rabid mac owners.

Re:same as iTunes

[rohlfinator]

Also, Xbox Live had already accumulated a fairly large userbase over the last four years on the Xbox. The article is only counting the "new" Xbox Live Marketplace, which is more of an upgrade than a brand new product. iTunes had no established userbase when it first launched.

Perhaps a more accurate comparison would be to iTunes sales after the release of version 4.1, the first Windows version. At that time, iTunes had been available on the Mac for two years, putting it in a similar situation as the current version of Xbox Live. I imagine those statistics would look very different.

Re:same as iTunes

[Anonymous Coward]

But isn't Marketplace only on Xbox 360? An accumulated userbase on Xbox Live wouldn't mean anything if they don't have access to Marketplace on their past-generation Xbox. Marketplace had to start from zero transactions with the launch of the 360 and work its way up to 10 million.

Re:same as iTunes

[Anonymous Coward]

But, Xbox has been released world-wide -- at that time, iTunes hadn't launched in europe yet and was only available to rabid mac owners.

But, to be fair, there are actually only four X-Box 360s in Europe, due to the whole manufactured "manufacturing-shortages"-to-build-up-hype thing.

Is it any wonder Microsoft is forced to hype their 9,999,997 free downloads plus 3 paid ones? We should just be glad they're not counting individual packets sent from their web server as "downloads" (assuming they aren't).

Re:same as iTunes

[twistedsymphony]

Exactly... going by your parent's comment Apple has been accumulating a user base for the past few decades with their macs. While I think TFA is BS I'd hardly consider Xbox 1 owners a user base for a service they CANT USE.

Talk about desperation...

[Gothic_Walrus]

iTunes isn't mentioned in the article proper, and it doesn't even appear on the page until one of the comments that appears halfway down the page.

We're stealing headlines from random forum users now? For shame, guys. For shame. :)

Free Downloads too

[Nazmun]

Thusfar, to my knowledge MS and 3rd parties do not charge money other then the xbox live fee. The ten million downloads were all free downloads in a sense. I'm not sure why in the world it would be compared to a service that charges money per download.

Re:Free Downloads too

[Dance_Dance_Karnov]

uhh...no. You pay real money for "points" that you then use to purchase downloads, not all downloads cost money. But they certianly aren't all free. IMO, the use of points to aquire downloadables is a great marketing move on MS's part, people don't think of them as money, and are more willing to part with them.

Re:Free Downloads too

[rtb61]

The wonderful world of microsoft marketing, do the downloads include or exclude patches and yes microsoft game console games now come with patches (as well as microsoft live updates/patches/bug fixes).

So what happens if you don't have a hard disk drive or you don't make use of microsoft live, do you just get stuck with beta versions of their games ?

Re:Free Downloads too

[The-Bavis]

I agree that the use of points is a good move, but let's be sure to not give Microsoft credit for what those genius carnies have been doing for years.

Other factors to consider

[Guspaz]

What was the average cost of items in real dollars? Avatars surely don't cost as much as entire games.

How many transactions remain if only count transactions that people actually paid for? In other words, excluding transactions made with points that came with the xbox or came with the xbox live subscription.

And of course, on top of all that, you can't really compare an online service that sells ONE item (songs, since we're only counting those in the 1 billion figure) to a service that sells everything from games to avatars.

Re:Other factors to consider

[Dajur]

Can we also ignore downloads generated by a huge pepsi promotion?

Re:Other factors to consider

[Guspaz]

It depends, really. When Microsoft gives free points, most of the content is created by them, so it doesn't cost them anything. Obviously some marketplace content (such as games) is created by third parties, so that would cost Microsoft money.

Pepsi paid apple for those downloads, so somebody was still paying for those songs.

Regardless, the point is moot. Pepsi's promotion failed. When they did it in 2004, they had 100 million songs to give away, but only ended up giving away 5 million. I think they did a second promotion too. So taking away 10 million from a billion still leaves 990 million songs.

I can totally see this...

[Jace of Fuse!]

I can totally see this! I mean there are SO many Xbox owners compared to iPod own...er... uh. Oh.

Are they sure they're not fudging numbers somewhere?

Well

[AWhiteFlame]

In other news: Apples more important than Google?

Oh yeah?

[maynard]

Well iTunes is more popular than the Beatles. And you know who the Beatles are more popular than...

Jesus is gonna get mighty pissed!

Re:Oh yeah?

[Schitzoflink]

Well not Jesus, he's prolly listening to John Lennon right now...but America...gotta watch out for them, they almost banned the Beatles

MS not on top

[Yjerkle]

Microsoft isn't at the top of the heap, though. Also released today were figures showing that ball-point pens outsold both XBox live and iTunes.

More News (just in)

[polyp2000]

Shoes are more popular than television sets.

More Spamming on XBox Live

[Trogre]

Ah, more Spamming on XBox Live, I see.

I wish Zonk would stop doing that.

Even worse than that

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't talking about how "popular" the services are, in terms of number of users. They're talking about the rate of growth for the a six month period of service. But it's not the same six month period of service! They're comparing the sales in the first six months of the iTunes Music Store, to the downloads in the first six months of XBox 360, even though the XBox Live game purchasing service was available for a full year and a half before the XBox 360 came out!

So: iTunes, we look at the number of downloads over that first six month period from day one's surprise launch, when the product was brand new and the market itself had essentially only just been freshly invented.

The XBox Live, we're looking at the number of downloads between months eighteen and twenty-four of operation, once the concept has been established and well-publicized for a long time, Nintendo and Sony are six months from getting essentially identical products to market, and beginning immediately after the release of a massive hardware revision which basically lead to every enthusiastic early adopter getting on the XBox Live Marketplace at the same time-- because there were no good retail games yet.

It seems to me you have to construe these numbers in a very complicated fashion before they start to appear impressive for Microsoft.

Xbox Live Music Service

[GroovinWithMrBloe]

Will Xbox Live finally provide Microsoft with a iTunes competing platform for selling music? (And lets face it, there is no iTunes competitor that is even remotely in the league of iTunes).

Oblig Simpson's Quote...

[tdeuces]

Article's comparison reminds of a conversation on the Simpson's:

Lenny: If you ask me, Muhammad Ali in his prime, was much better than anti-lock brakes.
Carl: Yeah, but what about Johnny Mathis versus diet pepsi?
Moe: Oh, I cannot listen to this again!

Gnomic Plan for xBoxLive

[WillAffleckUW]

1. Make xBoxLive Popular
2. Invest in MSFT stock
.
4. Profit!

Unfortunately, each song downloaded for the iPod is 99 cents, of which only 5 cents goes elsewhere, so it's way more likely that Apple will make a lot more money from iPod music usage than Microsoft will make money from the higher-cost, lower-revenue xBoxLive service.

Ask yourself - how many people with iPods use Apple's music service?

And how many people with xBox's use xBoxLive?

I have an xBox and I don't use it.

Re:Gnomic Plan for xBoxLive

[Dajur]

I would guess that more people with an Xbox use XBL than people with ipods that purchase songs on Itunes. I have a sampling of about 5 people that I have actually met and all 5 + me use XBL, only 2 out of the 6 use itunes. In terms of revenue ... all 6 pay $50 a year for XBL so ....... the 2 that use itunes each have to buy 150 song to generate equal revenue ..... not sure what that means for each service but it would seem to me that XBL has better margins.

Re:Gnomic Plan for xBoxLive

[muffdivr]

Lol, a rabid fanboy who is also statistically challenged.

Re:Gnomic Plan for xBoxLive

[iainl]

"each song downloaded for the iPod is 99 cents, of which only 5 cents goes elsewhere"

Are you absolutely certain about this? Because my brother's band get around 40p of the 79p that the UK version of iTMS sell their tracks for, and that's after the taxman and their record company have had their shares as well.

Re:Gnomic Plan for xBoxLive

[humajime]

Actually, there was a breakdown of where the money went, and its somewhere along the lines of 9 cents to Apple's expenses for getting the song to you (bandwidth, server, itunes programming), 1-2 cents profit, rest goes to the record label (who then pays the band). Apple makes negligable money off the iTunes music store (1 cent * 1,000,000,000 = 10 million profit). All the profit is made on iPods (40,000,000 sold this year @ at least 100 dollars profit = at least 4 billion dollars profit).

Re:Gnomic Plan for xBoxLive

[WillAffleckUW]

So, all six of you have iPods? If only 2 have iPods and those 2 use Apple for songs, then they have 100 percent penetration in your group.

Thus, it's possible that your group has more xBoxLive - but couldn't this be an observation altered by the very simple fact that it's your friends, and they all want to play games together?

Sometimes, my son and I play online with our neighbors, joining games, but we do that with our Mac and PC logins.

Thus, just as my circle of friends has noone who has xBoxLive, but have xBox, it is equally possible for you and your circle of friends to all have both. And yet my premise that 10 percent of xBox owners have xBoxLive could still be true, as would my premise that 90 percent or more of iPod owners buy songs from Apple, with a lower cost per subscriber for Apple.

Re:Gnomic Plan for xBoxLive

[WillAffleckUW]

Hmmm. I'm very glad your brother gets 40 pence of the 79 pence cost in the UK. However, having lived in Canada myself, where British music is popular, I believe I may be correct in stating that the renumeration rate for music is likely higher in the UK for artists than it is in the USA, where it typically is less than 10 cents for a 99 cent song.

Very popular artists demand higher cuts here, while unknown and starting artists get a lot less.

Re:Gnomic Plan for xBoxLive

[iainl]

That may well be the case. I'd expect that it's the record company keeping a higher rate, rather than Apple, however. Undertheigloo use the AWAL (Artists Without A Label) service to get on iTunes, and so their royalty rate is much higher than if they were signed with a major, but I can't see those majors agreeing to a smaller cut from Apple than the indies get.

Re:Gnomic Plan for xBoxLive

[Jearil]

Ask yourself - how many people with iPods use Apple's music service?

And how many people with xBox's use xBoxLive?

I have an xBox and I don't use it.

I have an iPod and I don't use iTunes.

You're not proving anything.

How many of those were free downloads?

[smaffei]

Sure MS got that many downloads. A lot of them were free. Like movie trailers, game demos, and tutorials on how to use the XBox 360.

I just think it's sad that MS keeps speweing out this FUD because they have no chance of catching up to the iPod.

how many of these downloads...

[angrymilkman]

were updates and bugfixes? Hey I can create my own popular portal by making crappy games.

Agreed.

[lampiaio]

Coincidentally, yesterday I read a post by someone whose signature was "Blocking stories posted by Zonk since [some date]". Maybe we should start doing the same; to me at least, his stories usually aren't worth the reading time. It wouldn't be unreasonable to say his stories actually makes us dumber in the long run.

Statistics 101

[fujiman]

Yes! Statistical Evidence with a sampling size of ONE!

You've sold me, sir! Clearly no one with an XBOX uses XBL.

Re:Statistics 101

[WillAffleckUW]

I didn't say noone with an xBox uses xBoxLive, I said it's more on the order of 10 percent.

However, I also didn't claim my t size was that big, nor that it had statistical significance.

interesting

[spartacus_prime]

And in other news, the Beatles are more popular than Jesus. But seriously, with free Xbox Live on the weekends (unless I'm horribly misinformed), I think the download rate might rival that of iTunes, at least per month.

Re:interesting

[Retroneous]

Yeah, maybe read the above posts before "doing a Slashdot" and just typing out the first joke that anyone would think of. kthx.

Re:interesting

[spartacus_prime]

I looked and found no mention of free Xbox Live.

Re:interesting

[Schitzoflink]

Ahh but the Beatles are more popular then Jesus joke was done already...

In a related story...

[SilentOneNCW]

In a related story, the Orange Industry of Florida declared "Oranges More Popular than Apple."

I've just got to ask...

[thedletterman]

So how many of those downloads were bug fixes?

Not a fair comparison really.

[Winterblink]

No doubt Microsoft is including things like free trailers and game demos, or evaluation versions of Live Arcade games. When Apple says "10 million downloads", it's another way of saying "10 million things sold". If they included all the things they deliver for free (Apple.com's movie trailer section, Quicktime/iTunes software downloads, patches, etc), I'm sure the number would be staggeringly large.

Does that number include patches?

[Alpha27]

I hope you realize this is a joke comment, not to be taken seriously by you overly analytical geeks.

Richest kid wins?

[neumayr]

Alright, so you can buy yourself some kick-ass car and rock at Project Gotham?

Oh well, skills are overrated anyways..

Fine...

[bynary]

but will XBL downloads reach a plateau sooner?

Don't update XBL 360!

[trana]

Check out the discussions on the Xbox site, apparently the March update has been trashing thousands of units and Microsoft can't replace them fast enough.

Xbox Live not free on weekends

[wayoutwest]

Though it was a hotly anticipated rumor, silver LIVE accounts do not have free play every weekend.
This coming weekend will actually be the first free access to all areas of live for Silver accounts. MS has not announced their next free weekend as of yet.