Xbox Live Marketplace tops 50 million downloads

Microsoft is singing the praises of Xbox Live Marketplace, announcing this morning that downloads from the service have surpassed the whopping 50 million mark. Apparently, the figure's doubled in just three months, so well done MS!

Revealing further Xbox Live stats, the company's said that users have logged over two billion hours online to date, and that EA's Madden NFL 07 and Live Arcade title Texas Hold 'em - recently made a free download for 48 hours - have proved extremely popular in connection with Microsoft's online service.

"Within the first week of release [of Madden NFL 07], gamers unlocked more than 600,000 achievements and Xbox Live hosted more than 2 million hours of game play. This is equivalent to 228 years of online gaming in the first seven days alone. Texas Hold 'em, set a day one record as the fastest downloaded item ever on the Xbox Live Marketplace, with over 100 downloads per minute in the first 24 hours of the title's release."

And for those who like statistics breakdowns, here's one of them:

Top Xbox Live Statistics



More than 50 million downloads of gaming and entertainment content from Xbox Live Marketplace to date

Over 2 billion hours spent on Xbox Live by gamers across the globe since the launch of the Xbox Live online gaming network in November 2002

More than 60 percent of Xbox 360 owners are connected to Xbox Live

1,300,000 text and voice messages are sent via Xbox Live every day. Currently totaling half a billion sent messages between the Xbox Live community per year, this figure is set to explode with the launch of the Xbox Live Vision camera on 19th September, 2006 in the U.S. and 6th October in Europe

65 per cent of all connected consoles already downloading and playing Xbox Live Arcade titles

Over 8 million downloads of Xbox Live Arcade games following the launch of Xbox 360

Over 2 billion Microsoft Points sold to date