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Two dollars here, fifteen dollars there, who knows how much money is actually being spent on Xbox Live, and I’m not saying this just because of the awkward points conversions required. While Microsoft hasn’t been incredibly forthcoming when it comes to showing the revenue they’ve made from Xbox Live, they did let some vague details slip to Forbes’ Oliver Chiang. In an E3 interview that Chiang had with Dennis Durkin, chief operating officer of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, Durkin stated that Xbox Live’s transaction business, which includes purchases from Zune Marketplace as well as the sales of DLC content and Avatar items, has recently surpassed its subscription business.  What this means is that Microsoft is now officially making more money from the sales of virtual goods than they are for charging Xbox 360 owners to play their games online. This is a pretty staggering statement when you factor in the number of Xbox Live subscribers and their $50 a year, as Chiang did, to arrive at a yearly income of $625 million from subscriptions alone. One can only imagine if Durkin’s statements were being overly conservative or not, but for now we at any rate know that every time we buy a new pair of pants for our Avatars, we’re helping to pad Microsoft’s wallet with at least another $625 million a year. |