6 million Xbox Live users and growing

In a GDC-timed announcement, Microsoft released usage details for Xbox Live and
Xbox Live Marketplace (all I can say is WOW!). Here are the stats as reported by
Gamasutra:

More than 6 million gamers worldwide have become members of Xbox Live for the
Xbox 360 (several months ahead of their goal)
Over 10 million Xbox 360s have been delivered to stores since the launch of the
Xbox 360 in November 2005. 
Xbox 360 is now available in 37 countries
Gamers have spent more than2.3 billion hours on the network playing games online
(equal to 95 million days of gaming or over 260,000 years)!
Top title is  Halo 2, with gamers spending over 710 million hours playig online
in more than half a billion games.
Microsoft reports an average of 2,000,000 text and voice messages sent every day
between members on the service
The average Xbox Live Gold subscriber has 22 friends on his or her Xbox Live
friends list. 
To date, Xbox 360 owners have unlocked nearly 300 million Achievements. All of
those unlocked Achievements have created a total combined Gamerscore of nearly
7.5 billion.
More than 70 percent of Xbox Live members are downloading content from Xbox Live
Marketplace, resulting in more than 135 million downloads since the launch. 
Nearly 50% of Xbox Live members in the U.S. log into Xbox Live Marketplace every
time they turn on their console.
Xbox Live Arcade service has now surpassed 25 million downloads--the top five
are:

1. Street Fighter II' Hyper Fighting
2. Bankshot Billiards 2
3. Marble Blast Ultra
4. UNO
5. DOOM

I like to add one important thing about Xbox....Kids are programmers...!

“Boku” is a simple, graphical programming environment for kids. It's built
on Xbox 360's XNA platform. It was debuted today at Techfest

From MS research site...

"Boku uses a novel, high-level programming paradigm within a 3-D gaming
world on the Xbox 360® to introduce children to creative use of the computer.
Boku's programming model is extremely simple as it does not use a textual
language or wiring diagrams. Kids use simple behavior cards to enable a small
virtual robot to navigate its world and achieve specific tasks. The goal is to
provide a gentle introduction to some of the foundational elements of creative
programming to children who may not yet be ready for the complexity of classical
computer languages. The user is exposed to behavior arbitration, generality,
representation of an abstract state, real-time experimentation and feedback,
simulation, sensors, physics, and message passing. The programming environment
is integrated in an attractive gaming world and controlled entirely via an Xbox
360 game controller"

Kind rgrds
Saran

saran:Xbox 360 is now available in 37 countries




Kind rgrds
Saran