Comments on: PlayStation Network Users Matches Xbox LIVE

By: mpz

mpz — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 22:28:17 +0000

Only Sony knows what the number represents – is it primary accounts, and thus effectively machines? Or is it everyone who ever logged into PSN?

Given the way they don’t specify, you can only assume it is the later, since every organisation likes to inflate their numbers as much as possible, without lying (e.g. vista is a success according to em-ballmer, even if many of those ‘sales’ were actually XP or replaced with redhat – like mine was).

Being free, even a relatively moderately `hard-core’ user will be quite casual about it. I think on xbox live, people will force themselves to try to get some value out of their subscription, so there’s no argument that xbox live would have to be far more populated – even if the number above represented only primary accounts.

By: fleakitten

fleakitten — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:16:12 +0000

So if everyone has 4-5 accounts per user then the 14 million number is inflated by that. Which could mean there are actually 3-5 million accounts.

I myself only have 1 account.

By: George

George — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:49:47 +0000

yeah I’ve also got more than 5 accounts on PSN, for each of the various territories. I did that back in 06 as the Canadian store was pretty empty at the time.

A more useful metric would be the number of unique users who have purchased an item at the store, or the number of unique users who have sent a message; I suspect those numbers are quite a bit lower for both PSN and XBOX Live

By: Office Ninja

Office Ninja — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:39:49 +0000

Hmmm opening up an account for North America, Europe, Japan, and Asia…. That’s genius. That way you have access to everything and have a better chance of getting invites to other offerings. Ok. I’ll do it.