Microsoft’s head of gaming and entertainment, Stephen McGill, had a few choice words to say recently in regards to Sony’s claims that the platform holder has now amassed 20 million registered PlayStation Network users.
Why does this bother Microsoft so much? Probably because it would mean that Sony is outperforming them in numbers in a category that they hold themselves highly in – namely, the online environment.
Speaking to Videogamer.com, McGill said, "there’s questions over what does Sony’s numbers really mean. When we talk about our numbers we feel they’re active users who are actively engaged in all the forms of entertainment we offer on Xbox 360. I think if you look at the comments made on the forums, or the comments made by analysts at Screen Digest then there’s questions over, well what does Sony’s numbers really mean? Are they duplicates? I think there’s a lot of questions there.
"All I’m really worried about is, I know I’m the largest online video on demand service in the UK, we are worldwide, we’ve got a great online service the others can’t come close to. They’re not right now. When you think of our heritage as a company Microsoft has proven we are probably the only company in the world that can offer great online experiences for millions and millions and millions of people. And that’s what we do every day with Xbox LIVE."
McGill added: "Sony do what Sony want to do and if they think that’s right for their business to say those kind of numbers then they can do and will do whatever they want to do. Do I believe them? No."
It’s interesting that McGill would bring up the idea of duplicate accounts when Microsoft’s own Xbox Live offers users the ability to create multiple silver accounts in order to gain that one free month of gold access.
Nobody can know for sure, but it’s quite possible a lot of those XBL account figures could be gamers trying to avoid paying the XBL Gold fees to play online by creating those accounts for their free month of access.
We’d like to know what you think below.