Xbox Live users now spend more time streaming media than gaming, according to study
Xbox Live users are spending more time streaming video and music than they are playing games.
According to Kotaku, Microsoft has released a report showing the average user spends 85 hours a month on Xbox Live, with 42-45 of those spent on streaming media.
Xbox Live usage is up by thirty per cent, and today the long awaited HBO Go, MLB.tv, and Comcast's Xfinity TV services were launched, giving yet more incentives for Xbox Live Gold memberships.
Though many (including HBO) worry that services like Hulu will bring traditional television down, most of the Xbox streaming apps require subscriptions of their own.
This includes the three new apps, with HBO Go requiring both traditional cable and HBO subscriptions.
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I'm amazed at the number of people who don't realize that they're being extorted in order to access third-party services which they either already pay for elsewhere, or which are free. Either way, the Gold "paywall" doesn't make economical sense for anyone other than Microsoft, unless Microsoft is sharing those profits with the content owners.
I've soured on console gaming in general over the past year or so, but I still occasionally log onto both XBL and PSN to keep up with what's new in their respective stores.
FWIW, Microsoft's add-on marketplace has the appearance of a bad flea market gone awry; you have to weed through *all* new content one item/page at a time, or search, in order to find something specific amongst all of the Rock Band, and Kinect game add-ons. PSN's add-ons are presented as a nested view, so there's much less clutter, allowing you to more quickly narrow down your search. Neither is perfect, but PSN's marketplace overall is more navigable than XBLM.
