Xbox 360's Live Marketplace Discusses E3 Popularity

According to Microsoft officials, downloads from the Xbox Live Marketplace online service have surpassed 24 million downloads since the launch of the Xbox 360 in November. The company enjoyed particular success by offering downloadable content relating to last week’s E3 expo in Los Angeles. During this time Microsoft, ran the “E3: Bringing It Home” promotion for a free week’s Gold membership, courtesy of Verizon in the U.S. and Adidas in Europe. Over 1.5 million consumers connected to Xbox Live during this time, downloading content including trailers for Halo 3, Gears of War and Fable 2; as well as new game content for Call of Duty 2 and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, various movie trailers and music videos. Xbox Live members downloaded over 5 million pieces of gaming and entertainment content during the seven days of E3: Bringing It Home, amounting to more than 600 terabytes of data. At the same time, traffic on Xbox.com doubled during the week, driving more than six million unique users to the site. The top ten most popular downloads over the course of the week were as follows: 1. Halo 3 game trailer (Microsoft Game Studios) 2. Lost Planet: Extreme Condition playable demo (Capcom) 3. Test Drive Unlimited playable demo (Atari) 4. MotoGP '06 playable demo (THQ) 5. X-Men: The Last Stand pack (20th Century Fox) 6. Gears of War game trailer (Microsoft Game Studios) 7. Call of Duty 2: Skirmish map pack (Activision) 8. Spider-man 3 game trailer (Activision) 9. Fable 2 trailer (Microsoft Game Studios) 10. Uno Xbox Live Arcade game (Microsoft Game Studios) "Only Xbox Live could bring E3 home in high definition for consumers around the world," said Peter Moore, corporate vice president of the Interactive Entertainment Business in the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft. "The sheer volume of downloads during E3 week was simply staggering. To put it in perspective, all the printed material in the U.S. Library of Congress is estimated to be about 20 terabytes, and Xbox Live delivered thirty times that amount in just seven days."