Xbox Live reaches 6 million subscribers, Good news for Quickflix

Microsoft really has pulled out all the stops on the Xbox 360 and driving a large portion of its uptake has been the unsurpassed Xbox Live service.

Yesterday Microsoft announced that the service had passed the 6 million subscriber mark. This is fantastic news, showing that a well thought out gaming machine can not only deliver awesome multiplayer experiences across the net but also a rich multimedia library directly into the lounge rooms of punters.

Concerns regarding the "download" rather than "stream" model seem to have fallen by the wayside with people quickly embracing the Live Marketplace and Video Marketplace available in the US. From the article:

Consumers have quickly jumped to the Xbox LIVE Marketplace as their one-stop download center. More than 70 percent Xbox LIVE members are downloading content from Marketplace, driving more than 135 million downloads since the launch of Xbox 360.

Xbox LIVE Marketplace is home to more than 7,000 pieces of individual gaming and entertainment content, downloadable at the click of a button.

Gamers have also quickly adopted the new Microsoft Points stored value system, with more than 5 Billion points activated on Marketplace to date.

This is great news for Quickflix. Why?

It is no secret that Quickflix has plans for VOD or DTO in the future. In fact an early version of our service was showcased at the launch of the Intel Viiv platform. With the news that people are willing to queue up and download content to be watched later as with the Video Market place, it means our entry into this segment of the market should be much easier. In these days of "I want it now" it is nice to know people are still willing to be patient and wait a little while for quality. A download to own / rent model is much easier to implement and overcomes a lot of the infrastructure hurdles currently presented by the Australian telecommunications network.

Now if only I could get in good with Microsofts Australian Xbox Live division ;)

EDIT: Added a little more info from the article

Xbox Live is down. Nerds around raise their heads and stare blinking into the sun...

Xbox Live went down today, an event that doesn't concern me all that much but really does illustrate something I really don't understand about this generation of gamers. Major Nelson posted on his blog news that the service was down and the team were working on the fix. Was this enough to placate the gaming masses? No. I don't know why I keep being suprised but people are just getting ruder and ruder. The service was down for a couple hours but straight away people start complaining and fretting about not being able to play. Its a couple of hours! Take a break, do something else. Is your life so boring that your entire existance is playing on your gaming system? Surely there is something you can do while waiting a couple of hours for a service to come back online other than complain on forums that the service is offline. Sheesh.