Report: Half of Xbox Live Subscribers Pay to Play

More than half of Xbox Live subscribers pay to play in online multiplayer  matches, this according to a report by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which says it reviewed an internal Microsoft [MSFT] document that includes subscriber figures.

The company said last month the number of Xbox Live subscribers grew 70 percent to 17 million worldwide, but did not discern how many of those subscribers are gold members, the ones who pay to play online games.

The Post-Intelligencer  report saw a fairly outdated document, an Excel workbook from a year ago with projections only to June 2008, which was well before Microsoft’s New Xbox Experience (NXE) launched in November. The workbook showed that 56 percent of worldwide Live users paid either an annual, three-month or monthly fee to play online games via their Xbox 360s. The number was higher here in the US at 60 percent.

That NXE introduced several new features consumers may find compelling, particularly the inclusion of streaming movies and TV shows from Netflix [NFLX] for gold members who are also Netflix subscribers. It’s likely the number of paying subscribers grew this past holiday season, due to the NXE launch.

As the Post-Intelligencer reporter stated, it is difficult to put the numbers in perspective when Microsoft keeps the number of paying subscribers close to the chest and its competitors in Nintendo’s Wi-Fi Connection and Sony’s [SNE] PlayStation Network do not charge for online gaming through their respective consoles.

True to form, Microsoft declined to comment to the Post-Intelligencer on the document it reviewed, but did confirm the majority of Xbox Live subscribers are gold members.