Why is the PlayStation Network Beating Xbox Live?
One of the biggest weapons in Microsoft’s arsenal against Sony is Xbox Live. The service, which began with the original Xbox, has undergone many iterations and changes that have made it the industry standard for online gaming. Why, then, do I say that it is losing to the PlayStation network, which is considered a much more primitive online system? It’s just simple numbers really.
A few days ago, Microsoft released statistics that showed that 2008 was the Xbox 360’s biggest year yet with the 360 climbing to 28 million life-to-date sales, 8 million more than the PS3. Also announced was 17 million, the number of Xbox Live subscribers (gold and silver, but a “majority” being gold), meaning that about 60% of the Xbox 360’s user base is online. At the time, that seemed like a very impressive number.
Well, Sony kind of stole their thunder today as they announced that there are 17 million PlayStation Network accounts. Given that the user base of the PS3 is 20 million, that means that 85% of PlayStation 3 users are online.
Before we continue, let me point out a potential problem with these numbers. The companies did not give any information about how many consoles those accounts were on, so there is the possibility of multiple accounts on each console, lowering the online rate. However, since this is a problem for both systems, it doesn’t change the fact that the PSN has a greater percentage of people online.
So here we have a paradox. The PS3 has (arguably) the inferior online service and smaller install base, yet has a higher online attach rate. In fact, if you don’t count silver members who can’t play online games, the PlayStation Network has a bigger multiplayer base than Xbox Live. How can this be possible? Well, it’s because of two reasons:
Number one: the PS3 has built in Wi-Fi, making it much easier to connect online for casual users. People who pick up an Xbox 360 on a whim don’t want to spend even more money on an expensive adapter to get online. They just want to turn the system on and have it connect simply.
Number two: The PS3 has free online. I know that Microsoft’s service has a free tier as well (which is included in the numbers), but the fact that there is a better version that costs money just gives the whole service a dogma of being expensive, even though it is relatively cheap.
These two factors, which may seem small, contribute to big problem for Microsoft. At the moment, their console has better online features (Netflix, for example), yet it is being destroyed by the competition in that area. Fix those two problems, however, and that difference should lower.
