Xbox and PS2 Struggle to Sell Online Gaming in Europe

[Shadow20002]

Xbox Live has launched a new drive to increase subscriber numbers, with signs that both it and Sony are struggling to sell their online gaming services in Europe.

Live was attracting 25,000 new users a month at first, but this is now believed to be nearer 7,500. It's giving away 2m coupons offering a two-month free trial of Live as the service launches in six more European countries next month. It'll also roll out a new ad slogan, 'it's good to play together', developed by McCann-Erickson.

Sony says it wants to sign as many as 800,000 users to its PS2 Online service, but has had an even slower start. It was launched in early June but has just 30,000 users among the 15.6m PS2 consoles in Europe.

Live was launched on 14 March in eight European countries. After two months user numbers hit 50,000. Microsoft is refusing to say how many more have joined since then, but one firm developing Live-enabled games told NMA that the figure was now around 80,000. If correct, this would mean that only 30,000 had signed up in the past four months.

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[DocHoliday78]

Those numbers are horrible. That ad campaign better give the box some much needed sales boosts. It must be pretty empty over there on there servers.