Xbox Addict

MS Says Half of 25 Million XBL Users Are Gold

Microsoft has revealed that half of the 25 million Xbox Live users accounted for in the past fiscal year (ending June 30) are Gold subscribers, putting revenue from Gold subscriptions alone at $600 million for the last year. Add in revenue generated by sales of DLC, movies, and TV shows, and it looks like Xbox Live revenue topped a whopping $1 billion in a single fiscal year for the first time ever.
As Bloomberg reports, Microsoft says that sales of DLC, movies, and TV shows exceeded the revenue brought in from subscriptions for the first time this year. So if that subscription revenue totaled around $600 million, then it sounds like Xbox Live revenue in total must have topped the $1.2 billion mark.

All this number crunching is necessary since Microsoft doesn’t release detailed sales and revenue figures for Xbox Live. Still, Bloomberg reports Goldman Sachs analyst Sarah Frier put her own estimate for Xbox Live revenue this past fiscal year at $1.1 billion, far exceeding the $800 million she estimated for the prior year.

With Microsoft making such a hefty sum from their online network, it’s no surprise some third parties are becoming increasingly more vocal about revenue sharing. Just earlier this week, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick claimed to the Financial Times that 60 percent of Xbox Live users were there "principally because of Call of Duty," and Activision isn’t seeing a fair share of the revenue.