Xbox Live leads the way in online entertainment

by Dean Evans at Friday 10th April, 2009 at 4:42 pm [0 comments]

The crystal ball-gazers at In-Stat foresee that Microsoft’s Xbox Live will be a $1 billion business by 2013. Ker-ching.

Sales of games consoles will dip, suggests the In-Stat research. But this will be offset by an increase in online gaming subscriptions (Xbox Live is a paid service), online advertising and micro payments for games, downloadable content, music tracks and movie rentals.

“Unit sales of game console will decline moving into 2010, as a result of both the weak economy and a peak in each vendor’s video game console lifecycle,” says Stephanie Ethier, In-Stat analyst.

“The key vendors, including Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo are staking out their online strategy to generate incremental revenue and promote brand loyalty.”

The future of consoles is online

The research conducted by In-Stat also claims that:

• The combination of broadband, installed home networks, and pervasive Wi-Fi in gaming devices, is fueling online gaming subscriber growth.
• Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo are positioning themselves to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in annual online revenue from their online services.
• Xbox Live will “clearly lead, with projected revenue of over $1 billion in revenue annually by 2013″.
• In 2008, total video game console unit shipments reached 88 million worldwide, up 7% from worldwide unit shipments in 2007.

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