40% of Xbox activity is non-gaming

Thought this was pretty interesting. MS's Trojan Horse has finally arrived. I think it's generally a good thing. Bring on the subscription TV that's rumored. Put pressure on the cable companies.

Let’s look at the numbers and then take a look at what they mean and what the future holds. Just for starters, we’ve sold more than 53 million Xbox 360 consoles, and Xbox has been the top-selling console in the last year. There are more than 30 million Xbox LIVE members. And more than 10 million Kinects have sold to date. Those are pretty big numbers for a device that, until recently, had primarily been purchased by hardcore gamers. But something interesting has happened in the last few years. While people are still playing a ton of video games, 40 percent of all Xbox activity now is non-game. Put another way, we’re seeing an average of 30 hours of video consumption per month per Xbox, a number that is growing fast. And people are expecting more – more options, more games, more videos, more entertainment.

I wonder if Sony's numbers are higher, with the number of people like me that use it for Blu-Ray more than gaming.

That's interesting, but it's not really that surprising. What I'd like to know is what percentage of that 40% is just Netflix.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

That's interesting, but it's not really that surprising. What I'd like to know is what percentage of that 40% is just Netflix.

Exactly. 40% sounds about right for Netflix on my PS3.

Also, I notice that they didn't mention the Zune store much, which makes me think it's not getting much traffic. Personally, I like the Zune store, but I'd traffic it much more if they'd let me buy videos with cash instead of points. I don't even mind points for games, but it grates for videos.

Yeah, the Zune marketplace is largely defunct, I'd imagine. I dropped my Zune Pass a while back, when I realized I was letting my 10 free downloads expire every month. My music is all bought through Amazon now, and my video needs are usually filled either by Netflix or Amazon.

40% sounds about right for me, as 40% of the time, it's sitting there, on the dashboard, waiting for me to tell it to do something.

Netflix. It's what I do when I'm not gaming The web content is fun too to catch up on some viral videos.

I'd say 85-90% of what I do on the PS3 is Netflix. Most of my gaming is PC, though.

That 40% is inline with my usage. We used it last night to watch the Lion Ki... err, Prince of Persia movie (actually pretty fun), and it was used to play CDs recently while cleaning out the downstairs (They Might be Giants and housecleaning always seems to go well together for me). I'd use it for Netflix, but I think it still requires a Gold account to do so.

The last game I played was... Alan Wake? That reminds me that I need to finish it; made it nearly to the end and then got distracted by something else.

Sounds right to my rough estimate. I always check my friends list to see who's doing what when I turn on the Xbox, and often more than one person is watching a video or Netflix.

I'm not part of that stat though, our Xbox is 99% gaming (1% streaming video from the iMac I didn't want to transcode). Netflix, rentals, and other streaming is handled by our Apple TV—in fact, Netflix was the argument I put forth to the wife to buy a shiny new Apple TV.

I still like the idea of convergence though. The original Xbox was also my DVD player back in the day. If the Xbox 720 came bundled with a remote and ran quiet, then bring it on.

I just hope that they do not forget why people buy these consoles in the first place. Console gaming came a long way this generation. I would hate to see that progress stunted to better service that 40%. I need a great melt-your-face gaming box more than anything, not a souped-up Roku or a dumbed-down PC.

I have one Xbox that's nearly solely used for Windows Media Center TV viewing (live cable or DVR'd content). It's only played games when I've taken it somewhere else to play games away from home, or when my main Xbox has been repaired.

I'd say that ~95% of my Xbox's time is spent in Netflix.

NSMike wrote:

Yeah, the Zune marketplace is largely defunct, I'd imagine. I dropped my Zune Pass a while back, when I realized I was letting my 10 free downloads expire every month. My music is all bought through Amazon now, and my video needs are usually filled either by Netflix or Amazon.

i think he was talking about the Zune Video Marketplace store. I doubt Zune Music is even a blip on the numbers. I wish XBL had Pandora, as that is the preference of my wife and daughter. But LastFM is okay. I don't see any purpose to Zune Music at all.

We use the Zune Marketplace occasionally. It's where I go for some cable programming that I don't have the patience to wait for, like The Walking Dead. We will occasionally rent a movie from it instead of going to Blockbuster. We use Netflix, but sometimes we want a movie now, and don't want to wait for the mail.

I'd say the movie rental prices are fine. In fact, I think they are cheaper than going to Blockbuster, or close enough to be equal. But for TV to take off, it needs to be A LOT cheaper. I ended up billing on The Killing just becasue the price is too steep when you factor in the whole season. I will wait for the DVD, or hope it hits streaming on Netflix later.

But the for the topic, I've really noticed that we have gotten to using the Xbox significantly more since Netflix cam on-board. But it also seems to have led to my wife and daughter using it even more for gaming. It's become a pretty central hub for our entertainment consumption.

heavyfeul wrote:

I just hope that they do not forget why people buy these consoles in the first place. Console gaming came a long way this generation. I would hate to see that progress stunted to better service that 40%. I need a great melt-your-face gaming box more than anything, not a souped-up Roku or a dumbed-down PC.

I completely agree and this is my main concern with the majority of recent analysis of the video game market. I'm afraid of people interpreting this as 40% of gaming replaced with Netflix. I see this kind of commentary often when discussing the growth of casual gaming as if somehow the industry is a fixed size/zero sum game.

I'm pretty sure my increased Netflix usage actually led to increased gaming on my PS3 as well.

Yes, I was talking about Zune Video. Zune Music isn't really a factor with the Xbox.

The prices for movies are fine, by and large, although I rent movies more than I purchase them. Television prices are fine if I want to own the show but not for shows that are more or less disposable. I don't mind paying $3 per episode for something like The Killing that I'm likely to revisit, but that's steep for Top Chef when I'll likely never watch any of it again. I'd love to see the Zune marketplace offer rentals for TV shows, but that could be a content provider issue more than one with Microsoft. It's probably the content providers that keep videos off the Zune Pass, as well.

Jayhawker wrote:
Gravey wrote:

I'm not part of that stat though, our Xbox is 99% gaming (1% streaming video from the iMac I didn't want to transcode). Netflix, rentals, and other streaming is handled by our Apple TV—in fact, Netflix was the argument I put forth to the wife to buy a shiny new Apple TV.

I'm thinking about picking up an Apple TV myself. I'm unsure if I would use it for Netflix and video, but I would be perfect for streaming out iTune, iPhoto, and iMovie libraries. I wish the Xbox handled this better, but it's not like Microsoft and apple will be getting into bed anytime soon. And really, $99 for a tiny black box that seamlessly delivers out content is not a bad deal, at all. If it ends being our Netflix streamer as well, that's fine.

Yup, it's been great. Between Netflix (it's only instant watch in Canada) and iTunes movie rentals, we haven't been to a brick-and-mortar rental store or even put a disc in the DVD player for months. I'm happy to have passed on Blu-ray, streaming HD is the way I want to go for movies and TV—less than five minutes between wanting to watch anything and watching it.

Before the ATV I had bought Connect360 for $20, which streams iTunes, iPhoto and ~\Movies content to an Xbox, and I still use it for watching Xvid movies or just changing the background photo of the Dashboard.

MannishBoy wrote:

Thought this was pretty interesting. MS's Trojan Horse has finally arrived. I think it's generally a good thing. Bring on the subscription TV that's rumored. Put pressure on the cable companies.

Maybe I'm ignorant here, but how can they put pressure on the cable companies, when the cable companies are controlling the bandwidth?

I've seen all the reports about Netflix being 99.99999% of the interwebs or some such, but once Netflix becomes a genuine threat to the cable co's, you can bet they'll find a way to cut off Netflix' bandwidth, or charge them heavily for it.

I'm a perfect example of what's happening: Last year I canceled my cable TV, and now just use Netflix and Hulu+, and it's been wonderful. I feel like I'm riding in a dream, and soon the cable co's are going to sound the alarms and wake me up, with their hand out asking for my wallet. I don't see it lasting very long. I'm getting tens of thousands of TV shows and movies, many in HD, for $18/month.

I'm pleased as punch with Netflix streaming, and it appears that I'm not the only one.

I just hope that proposed monthly broadband caps don't torpedo the service.

Gravey wrote:

I'm not part of that stat though, our Xbox is 99% gaming (1% streaming video from the iMac I didn't want to transcode). Netflix, rentals, and other streaming is handled by our Apple TV—in fact, Netflix was the argument I put forth to the wife to buy a shiny new Apple TV.

I'm thinking about picking up an Apple TV myself. I'm unsure if I would use it for Netflix and video, but I would be perfect for streaming our iTunes, iPhoto, and iMovie libraries. I wish the Xbox handled this better, but it's not like Microsoft and Apple will be getting into bed anytime soon. And really, $99 for a tiny black box that seamlessly delivers our content is not a bad deal, at all. If it ends being our Netflix streamer as well, that's fine.

Jeff-66 wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:

Thought this was pretty interesting. MS's Trojan Horse has finally arrived. I think it's generally a good thing. Bring on the subscription TV that's rumored. Put pressure on the cable companies.

Maybe I'm ignorant here, but how can they put pressure on the cable companies, when the cable companies are controlling the bandwidth?

I've seen all the reports about Netflix being 99.99999% of the interwebs or some such, but once Netflix becomes a genuine threat to the cable co's, you can bet they'll find a way to cut off Netflix' bandwidth, or charge them heavily for it.

I'm a perfect example of what's happening: Last year I canceled my cable TV, and now just use Netflix and Hulu+, and it's been wonderful. I feel like I'm riding in a dream, and soon the cable co's are going to sound the alarms and wake me up, with their hand out asking for my wallet. I don't see it lasting very long. I'm getting tens of thousands of TV shows and movies, many in HD, for $18/month.

I think there would be some difficulty with regulators if ISPs started getting overly anti-competitive here. The entrenched players are not going to make it easy, but neither did the music industry when music downloads started to change the way their businesses worked.

I'd love for Xbox and other similar devices to shake things up and disrupt the TV industry. Somebody's going to do it sooner or later, as linear programming and the way it's delivered is really not a logical way for most content to be delivered with the tech that's in play these days.

Recently there's been talk of MS going for some OS on tablets, and making certain demands of the implementations for things like responsiveness, hardware specs, start up speed, etc. in order to license the OS on that hardware. That's led me to wondering if any of the console platform owners would ever move to a licensing their console experience on general entertainment systems, just as you'd license DVD/blu-ray playback, seeing as the current generation of consoles is a bit old in the tooth in technology terms and should be reasonable to get into hardware specs on modern hardware. Would a console platform owner be willing to forego the base console manufacturing, in return for licensing the OS?

My first post on GWJ a while back was about this. It's always been weird to me that Microsoft originally made the 360 just a game machine. Obviously that has changed recently but it's still not far enough; I mean these guys are Microsoft.

I really think their next console should be named Microsoft Home where it's essentially an idiot proof HTPC. You could use it to check your e-mail, browse the internet, chat on Skype, watch/record TV, stream music, download Windows Phone apps and oh yeah, play games. More importantly, all of these things could finally work well on a television with Kinect 2.0. Essentially they would have the iPad for your TV. It just seems weird to me that Microsoft has gone after gamers when they could do what they usually do, which is go after everyone.

So yeah, I hope they can wait until 2014 to bust out their next console and give that bad boy 512mb of ram minimum just to the OS. Heck, I think it would actually be amazing if at a future E3 Microsoft announced Xbox OS and made the hardware open to other manufacturers.

I also watch lots of cat videos on the entertainment hub thing.

MannishBoy wrote:

I think there would be some difficulty with regulators if ISPs started getting overly anti-competitive here. The entrenched players are not going to make it easy, but neither did the music industry when music downloads started to change the way their businesses worked.

That's where the lobbyists come in.

And did you notice how the FCC approved the Comcast/NBC merger, then a few months later the person responsible for the FCC signing off on the deal leaves the FCC for a high paying job at Comcast. How convenient.

Nah, I don't think the government is going to stop sh*t (hope I'm wrong). The big corporations are running the show.

Jeff-66 wrote:

That's where the lobbyists come in.

And did you notice how the FCC approved the Comcast/NBC merger, then a few months later the person responsible for the FCC signing off on the deal leaves the FCC for a high paying job at Comcast. How convenient.

Nah, I don't think the government is going to stop sh*t (hope I'm wrong). The big corporations are running the show.

I'm familiar with that, but there have been things already where government's stepped in to say the ISPs are going to far. See Comcast and deep packet inspection a few years ago.

Not going to be easy, but the disruption that started with VCRs to DVRs is now moving to on demand streaming.

Puce Moose wrote:

That 40% is inline with my usage. We used it last night to watch the Lion Ki... err, Prince of Persia movie

You're ashamed of the wrong movie. The Lion King is great! Favorite Disney movie of all time, including anything Pixar has done. I doubt I could bring myself to watch Prince of Persia.

It must be higher than 40% use for netflix then based off of this thread since... well, you guys being american might not actually notice..... but of those 53million Xbox 360s how many are in the US and Canada?

There's nothing for the rest of us outside of those two territories.

Duoae wrote:

It must be higher than 40% use for netflix then based off of this thread since... well, you guys being american might not actually notice..... but of those 53million Xbox 360s how many are in the US and Canada?

There's nothing for the rest of us outside of those two territories.

Aren't there other services on Live in parts of Europe? TV tie ins, like Canal+ in France, etc?

Wonder how many people have actually signed on with AT&T Uverse to use their Xboxes as secondary cable boxes?

In the UK they all pretty much failed because of MSes requirement that you charge for them. I don't know anyone who uses their 360 for ITV/C4 content instead of their PC/laptop. I can't speak for other major EU countries... but the minor countries, as ever, are uncatered for.

Hell, i don't think we ever even got 1 vs 100.

Sky in the UK is available through XBL gold.

The UK is also a barely a 360 stronghold in europe, everywhere else prefers the PS3/Wii, only in the US does the 360 have a slight lead over the PS3.

everywhere else prefers the PS3/Wii, only in the US does the 360 have a slight lead over the PS3.

What are the gaming numbers like in Countries like Spain, Greece, and Italy.. Greece in particular seems to be very different when it comes to video gaming.. very much in the culture that you only play video games when you are a small kid...at best early teenager... I dunno.. maybe with 40% unemployment the numbers will go up now lol (wait...thats not that funny)