@obsidian_born: So, are you saying in order to play my Steam games on Win10, I'm going to require an XBL account? Really??
Or, is just having Win10 meaning, I'm a "XBL" account holder...and every time I log in to my Win10 PC I'll be an 'active' XBL user? So, writing a document and browsing the internet, makes someone a "gamer", huh?
@civilenginerd: I can agree with your assessment, but if hardware sales are so "irrelevant" why is MS so hell-bent on not reporting the numbers to the public? The reason why is this...
If you confirm to the general consumer-base that you are continually losing in sales numbers to your competitor, then those consumers go with your competitor when it comes time to purchase, thus furthering the disparity. If you don't sell hardware, then you don't get the market penetration needed to sustain those high gains on services.
Microsoft is trying to find a way to stop the hemorrhaging here. In order to do that, they have to find a way to gain consumer confidence. This is how they are choosing to do it. If nobody can state definitively that hardware sales are 1/2 what the competition is doing, that's half the battle. (Kind of the anti-thesis of GI Joe...NOT knowing is half the battle!)
I wonder what they'll report when they find that their subscribers are spending less money YoY, and they're finding that the subscriber-base isn't increasing YoY. If they are going to include Win10 as "active" users, I guess that's fine. Invalid and irrelevant...but fine. Whatever motivation they need to get up in the morning.
@livedreamplay: Remember, a single console can have multiple XBL accounts associated with it. If I wanted to create 10 XBL accounts on my ONE Xbox 360, I could do so. I'm more curious to know how they characterize "active", which they are being purposely evasive on as well. I have 3 XBL accounts on my Xbox 360. I haven't turned the console on in about 8 months. I take that back, I turned it on about a month ago to get any system updates that might be waiting; and then subsequently turned it off. Does an "active" XBL account mean that you connected to their service? Does "active" mean that you have purchased something from their digital store in the past 3 months? As far as I'm concerned an "active" XBL account may not even generate any revenue for them, unless they're willing to confirm otherwise.
In answer to your question...I'm guessing that Win10 users that may have had to set up an XBL account would probably be classified as an "active" account. But, who knows, because they won't tell us what "active" means or what systems are covered by that.
@pongley: You still have an XBL account. You need one to have the console, I believe. Whether you're PAYING for it is a different story. Note they didn't say that they are sharing XBL GOLD subscription numbers. Just the total number of users/accounts that they have.
It's ill-representative of anything at all...but if that's what they need to do to get up in the morning, that's fine with me.
@Adam802: Well then, I hope Sony/PS start reporting their numbers for PSN and PS+ subscriptions. Because I'm sure those are kicking the living s**t out of MS/XBL as well.
@bobafetthatesu: I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're saying. How do you share content on the same console over multiple accounts? Are you saying that you can have one (digital?) copy of the game and then multiple accounts play that one copy simultaneously? I vaguely recall Xbox allowing "friends" to borrow a copy of a game (digital?) for some period of time...or being able to offer a one-time trade of a game to a friend. I thought that was just moving the license over to another account or something though. But everything I've ever heard about this was very limiting in terms of actually sharing a game with multiple people simultaneously.
Also, not sure why you would have 2 PS4s either. How big is your family that you need that many consoles?? I could see having a PS4 and then a PS TV allowing you to remote play in another room. But not sure why you would need 2 completely independent PS4s...unless there are multiple gamers in your house, which there certainly could be.
TL;DR - What are the use cases you're "promoting" or interested in?
Something is definitely afoot here...but I'm not sure what it could be. Vivendi is certainly up to no good; I have to wonder if there isn't some sort of Icahn-esque thing being planned in the coming 12 months.
Vivendi could just be trying to make a play on some short term investment...but why they would bother with Ubisoft, I don't know. It doesn't seem like they've got too much on the horizon.
As I say, something isn't right here...I smell a rat.
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