The Verge: Steam rises to 65 million active users, eclipsing Xbox Live

"Steam now has more than 65 million active accounts. The figure marks a 30 percent rise in players over the last year. The video game digital-download platform also boasts daily peak concurrent users of more than 6 million"

" in the same year its two major console competitors are releasing new machines. In contrast to Steam's figures, Microsoft's Xbox Live has 48 million accounts"

"Sony and Microsoft's still focus on providing an online ecosystem for games obtained through physical media. But these new figures do suggest that Steam doesn't have to worry about being eclipsed: its users on their own are numerous enough to make the service a worthy competitor"

-I'm not a console hater I had a bunch of consoles since the Atari days, but these days with PC, Tablets, Smartphones, and Ultrabooks really seems like the old console way is redundant.

-Risk adverse unimaginative AAA industry is not really making a case for next gen either: Battlefield the fourth, hee no thanks I have it on PC. Modern Warfare the 20th, woops maybe wait for steam sale.

-And then there is the Console manufacturers with their ancient DRM policies, not helping either: Wii-U hardware bond downloads!? seriously are you kidding me... haven't they learnt anything from the Apple store?

Breaking news: Numbers of people play games on platforms! and a platform that can be downloaded free on any computer is the most populous!

Film at 11

This makes me wonder when a new service will surface that is even better than Steam. In 5 years, 10?

It is interesting that we have all of these games and apps tied to one specific service, and should Steam keel and die all of our digital goods in their part of the cloud will disappear with it.

Free? I bet my ass League of Legends has done more money than GTAV or COD.

Man league of legends is so free!

You kind of missed the point there. Actually, let me rephrase - you completely missed the point there.

Steam stopped me from pirating games. They made it easier to play games than torrenting and cracking them. That's good enough for me.

@donpixel: Way to miss a point there.

yeah I re-read that... that´s what I get for posting a quick answer while being distracted

in other news, the number of PC's sold in just the US during 2011 outsells the entire world wide lifespan of the Xbox 360.

It's all about how you look at the numbers.

355.12 million PCs sold worldwide in 2011 / 65 million steam users = 18% of users

50 million world wide Xbox 360 sales in 2011 / 30 million Xbox live users = 60%

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/01/05/xbox-360-hits-50-million-worldwide-xbox-live-users-top-30-milli/

At this point I'd say that Valve has become a company so large that it won't just "keel over and die". It would be a pretty slow death.

Anyway, this isn't really surprising. Turns out that people like being entertained. Turns out that people like being entertained on the cheap. Turns out that Steam has a lot of cheap, entertaining stuff that will run on practically anything you can buy in your local Wal-Mart.

The more interesting, useful and relevant information would be the average number of games a Steam user owns vs. Xbox or Playstation as well as the average dollar amount spent.

As for this: whatever.

Through the store? I am going to guess those numbers are going to be insane. Steam sales.. Steam sales.. Steam Sales. Same for average games owned. Too many cheap games and big bundles sold on the Steam store. I am not average but for me it would be 50:1 game wise on Xbox and (because of PS+) 5:1 on PS3.

@l4wd0g That's not a fair comparison, how many of those PCs are for schools, businesses and such?

Yeah it would probably be pretty insane. I own 426 games on steam, that's more than I have owned on all consoles combined, and I have seen many with even more games.

The most played game has been Solitaire/Freecell/Minesweeper.

Does that mean around 40% of all 360's are never connected to the Internet? You need an account to access the store, download patches and stuff like that, don't you? I may of course be wrong, since I've never had a 360 and don't really know how that stuff works on the system.

How common would you say it is to have multiple accounts on the same Xbox by the way, wouldn't that make the possible number of non-connected 360's even larger?

Some vague press-speak here. What does "active accounts" mean? How many folks are like me and have purchased all of one game from Steam in the last three years and just let their account idle there? Also helps that Steam is a free service with no direct hardware buy-in requisite (a'la PSN to PS3).

That aside, still impressive. Glad Steam's doing so well. It's a fantastic service.

As many games as a lot of us own on Steam, there are so many people I see on there that have nothing but Dota 2 or TF2 on their account and that's all they play. I'll bet a huge percentage of that 65 million are free to play folks that never spend a dime.

I wonder if that 48 million live customers is only people that have Gold, I would have guessed the number to be higher.

Maybe not, how many consoles have they sold and are still in use? 48 million would probably be pretty close.

Sounds good.

This is what stopped me too and now I like paying for games and supporting developers that make the games I like

Two of those accounts are mine. One I had before I owned a decent PC, and I only used it to play free Peggle. Some dude stole the account, and Valve won't give it back to me because I never bought a game on it grrrr....

We are legion!

Not surprising since Steam has no real competitors unlike consoles. And there are plenty of games that require steam as DRM.

Yeah this is a big part of why it would be fascinating to me, and, more importantly, I'm certain seeing that data would inspire console market's to embrace sales. My thought is all the F2P players still won't drag the average number of games purchased down to anywhere near console numbers. On the other hand imagine comparing that data to the amount of games and dollars spent with mobile consumers.

What the fuck is going on in that cartoon.

sigh, remember that 10 year anniversary a few months back and Activision had a 15% off CoD. Sigh, good times.

there should be more users, there are like 1 billion pc

what does it feel like to be eaten by gabe.................

@themanwithnoplan: Have you seen this one?

For those curious, I think RPS confirmed active means the account has been logged into in the past fortnight

@robothamster: Yeah. It very aptly depicts what life is like on that fateful beginning day of a major Steam sale.

Me too. I've even gone back and bought games I previously torrented. If the price is low and the install is easier and guaranteed to work I'm happy to buy everything on Steam.

EDIT: @robothamster I wonder if the misuse of wait/weight is a mistake or a parody of bad subtitles. I'm not trying to pick holes in the video, just wondering.