Either a lot of people are using Xbox Live, or some people need to get out of the house a heck of a lot more.
You might not think that you use Xbox Live that much, maybe a few games of Halo: Reach here, or a movie or two via Netflix there, but those hours add up, and with 25 million people using the service, they add up to a very big number.
New statistics from Microsoft have revealed that each Xbox Live user spends an average of 40 hours a month on the service, which when multiplied by the 25 million Xbox consoles connected to the service, totalled a billion hours collectively. The statistics showed that over the last year Xbox Live had seen a 157% increase in the time spent watching TV shows and movies on the service, and 42% of Xbox Live Gold subscribers in the US watched at least one hour a day.
A billion hours is a heck of a lot of time to spend using Xbox Live – it works out as around 115,000 years – and what’s even more amazing about it is that each person doesn’t have to spend all that much time using the service to get the number up that high. It’s a safe bet that PS3 owners spending a similar amount of time on PSN, especially as recent figures from Sony show that there are actually more PS3 connected to the internet than Xbox 360s.
You’ve got to assume that just regular TV viewing gets much higher monthly figures than any console, but a billion hours a month is nothing to be sneezed at, and has clearly proven to be very enticing to services like Netflix.. Both Microsoft and Sony have more TV and movie services in the pipeline – ESPN and Hulu Plus for the 360, and Hulu Plus and LoveFilm in the UK – which will undoubtedly push the number even higher.
