Xbox Live passes a million users

Microsoft has announced that there are now over a million users of the Xbox Live console online gaming service, which makes it into one of the fastest-growing online services of any description in the world.

The company announced the milestone for the service, which it originally set for itself as a target for June, in a statement last night - revealing a number of other statistics in the process, such as the fact that over 160 million hours have been spent on the Live service so far (around 20,000 years) and that an average of 265,549 hours are played each day.

According to Microsoft, the growth of the service is three times faster than other consumer online services such as internet access and information service America On-Line or digital video recording service TiVo.

The statement also listed the top 15 cities around the world in terms of Xbox Live user base, and while 12 of the cities were in North America, there was room in the top 15 for London, Seoul and Tokyo, with the latter being particularly surprising given the low installed base of the Xbox in Japan.

"Great game content has been and will continue to be the key to the success of Xbox Live," according to Microsoft's corporate VP of worldwide marketing and publishing, Peter Moore. "What really sets the service apart from others is that we make it incredibly easy for consumers to get online, find their friends, join a game and start playing right away; Xbox Live is a great experience every time they play, regardless of what they play."