Sony Claims 14 Million Active PSN Accounts >

	2008/11/18 9:50:04: Posted by DM
	SCEA stated this morning that there are 14 million active PSN accounts, globally. The 14 million users have downloaded over 273 million different bits of content, as well. In July, Sony said that there were 9.8 million registered users, this is a big jump for less than a year. "With 14 million active accounts and 273 million pieces of content downloaded, we know that you're thirsting for this digital entertainment," said John Koller, director of hardware marketing for SCEA, on the company blog. >Link
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Three of those accounts are mine. Well, then again maybe not, two of them I'd hardly call 'active'. By my calculations, Sony's got a better than 85% enrollment rate for PSN. Higher than I would have guessed.

Out of curiosity, anyone have the stats handy on XBox Live? I'm wondering if lack of built-in WiFi and two-tiered account pricing may or may not affect user adoption of Live.

I'd doubt it does madgunde. Most gamers don't mind the $50 per year cost and b/c of connection issues, I can't imagine a lack of wifi being a huge problem. I hardly play my 360 and I still pay my $50 a year, lol.

Was basing my calculation on 16 million units sold. VGC is listing 16.71 million sold, so the adoption might be around 83-84%.

@VaeVictus

It might have very little effect, just curious. Another possible factor that might affect adoption is if the 360 sells to more lower income homes (just speculating), then it's possible that lower broadband adoption rates in that demographic may also have an impact. This is of course assuming online adoption on the 360 is lower, which it may not be. That's why I'd like to see some numbers.

stay away from vg charts period

lol @ madgunde, where do you come up with this stuff?

Madgunde: 85% enrollment rate is absolute horse sh!t. I can gaurantee that those 14 million active PSN accounts are not for 14 million PS3's. Not even close. Sony does not differentiate between how many consoles have multiple PSN accounts. Just like I doubt Microsoft's XBL numbers. I would put that adoption rate at closer to 50% for both consoles.

@PimpDaddy

Agreed, I don't doubt a good number of those are duplicates for the same person or multiple people using the same PS3. It would be interesting to know what they mean by 'active' accounts, although I doubt their definition would be too exclusionary since they want to show higher numbers not lower.

But all things being equal (ie: assuming the duplication occurs at the same rate on both platforms), knowing how many active Live accounts there were in comparison to the number of 360's sold would at least help us gauge which platform was seeing higher usage amongst it's user base.

What they mean by active accounts is just an account that has been made. If you made 3 accounts on your psn or 360 but only use 1, well both would still count that as 3 "active" accounts.

I wouldn't assume that duplication occurs at the same rate on both consoles. America is the biggest market for the 360, this market receives 97% of the content first, thus giving a huge chunk of the install base little reason to create multiple accounts. I've made a European account just to download the RainbowSix Vegas demo early and that has been the only piece of content to be released in Europe before America (that has any value).

I also wouldn't assume...........well anything if I were you madgunde. It seems that all of your assumptions are a bit skewed to be considered reasonable.

The service that has higher usage amongst the users has already been answered. Ask yourself this, which of the two companies has announced their number of concurrent users so far? That is really the only real way to measure how much a service is used. I'll give you a clue, it wasn't sony and if there usage was higher, they would surely show it off since it's a significant milestone to achieve.

Edit:

to clarify, I'm not saying that duplicated accounts doesn't happen on both consoles, but it would be inaccurate to say that it's equal

@Xenos

Regarding concurrent users, which I'm taking means number of people online at the same time, aren't those stats normally only for online gaming? I'm looking for more overall online use, not just playing multiplayer games.

As for assumptions, I wasn't saying I assume it's equal, I was merely trying to eliminate unknowns from the equation, since they're unknown. We also don't know what percentage of all accounts are duplicates, and whether they're a significant amount to really care about. But since we're on the subject, but the same token, 360 owners tend to be more hard-core gamers on average, who are more likely to even be aware that there is content available from other regions let alone care enough to set up multiple accounts, so that might balance things out a bit. NA might be the 360's biggest market, but more than 50% of 360s were sold outside of NA, so that's still a huge number of people who would want to access NA content from abroad.

Look, spin it any way you want, I'm just saying that assuming about such things is useless. I know you want Live numbers to help you sleep at night, but it's stupid to think that 14 of the 15 million PS3's out there play online.

I'm done here though, you've been eager to spin everything (360 selling to more lower income homes? WTF) so this discussion is really pointless. I really wish you were able to have an objectable conversation without spinning everything in a positive for sony or set-back for MS. You may think the same about everything I've typed, but my comments are based off of released statistics while yours are based on assumptions skewed only one way.

Let me know when you're done living in sony-land and I'll be happy to talk about either service.

I'll just close by saying that it's known (not an assumption) that Sony only releases figures that works for their benefit and hides what can hinder their image. It's clever marketing, but it also lacks accuracey with many gray areas.

So basically there is a reason that the number of users is the only statistic that Sony has released, while MS has released plenty of stats including concurrent users (online, not just playing games) total users, average of clocked hours, and so on.

Not trying to make either side sound good or bad, but it's something to keep in mind.

So congrats to sony for the 14 million milestone, hope to read other stats soon.

edit: WTF why didn't it merge? eh whatever

Whoa, who said anything about 'playing' online? We're just talking PSN accounts. I know very well that a lot of them are only used for firmware updates and downloading demos/movie trailers. How many, I don't know, and would be interested to find out. Likewise, a good number of Live members don't play online either. I'm sorry you're seeing my honest curiosity as an attempt to spin, and I too wish you could be objective enough to just have a discussion without assuming I'm trying to paint Sony as the winner. Oh well.

As for my comment about lower income demographics, the 360 is quite a bit less expensive than the PS3, so isn't it a pretty safe bet that it's more popular with the lower income demographic than the PS3? I'm not saying that ONLY low income households buy 360's, nor am I implying that people with money don't buy the 360. But if I were to have to pick which console has a higher percentage of owners without broadband between the 360 and PS3, I'd guess the 360 simply because it's less expensive and so would be more appealing to households that are more price conscious about spending money on things like broadband.

I come in here and read this:

"I'm wondering if lack of built-in WiFi and two-tiered account pricing may or may not affect user adoption of Live."

"Another possible factor that might affect adoption is if the 360 sells to more lower income homes (just speculating), then it's possible that lower broadband adoption rates in that demographic may also have an impact. This is of course assuming online adoption on the 360 is lower, which it may not be."

Just within your first 2 posts you paint MS in a negative light, so it's not hard to see how I or anyone else can come to such thoughts.

I'm not saying it's wrong to be objective, but those theories are just asinine. Your thinking truly makes no sense since it could be applied and spun to any 2 consoles. It's like you have no business sense and I'm not saying that to insult, but that's just grasping for straws in terms of curiosity. Not to mention you admitted to be assuming and nothing more, so it's not like I'm pickin on your or anything. Besides to be honest with you, if you were genuinely curious, you would have actually made effort into finding out the answer instead of looking for reasons to what would hinder the amount of Live member on the 360, right? <- that right there is the key factor here.



I understand what you're saying about the lower income demographic, but I don't see how that would effect the total number of Live members in general. With a bigger install base, you're going to have bigger gaps in almost every category. If you don't understand what I'm talking about, then say so, but there are too many factors involved to make such baseless assumptions.

No one is trying to take away from Sony's little announcement here. What they accomplished is a huge improvement to what they did last gen. However, bringing Live into this discussion serves no purpose outside of a e-penis waving contest IMO, especially when discussions of Live vs. PSN are rarely done with knowledge and an open mind.

Anyways, to answer your questions, as of the end of the last quarter (not sure if it's fiscal or calendar), MS announced that there are 14 million Live members. That was on an install base of around 22.5 million 360s.

This is why I find it hard to believe that of the 16+ million ps3s out there, that 14 million people are online with the system. I would like to know more stats, because it just sounds fishy knowing how the market works.