Valve’s Steam is now bigger than Microsoft’s Xbox Live

by Mark Tyson on 31 October 2013, 09:51

Tags: Valve, PC

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Valve’s Steam digital distribution platform and community has recently grown to eclipse Microsoft Xbox Live. Valve announced that over 65 million accounts are active on the Steam games downloading service. Steam has done particularly well in the last 12 months with user numbers surging by 30 per cent.

The Steam service originated around 10 years ago exclusively for Valve titles such as Half-Life. Since that time the platform has evolved and Valve is very happy to digitally distribute games and applications from many other publishers large and small. Currently Steam users have easy digital access to over 3,000 software titles on PC with a subset also available on Mac and Linux.

“The main goal of Steam has always been to increase the quality of the user's experience by reducing the distance between content creators and their audience,” said Gabe Newell, co-founder and president of Valve. “As the platform grows, our job is to adapt to the changing needs of both the development and user communities. In the coming year, we plan to make perhaps our most significant collaborations with both communities through the Steam Dev Days and the Steam Machines beta.”

The conference for Steam Developers takes place in Seattle in January, notes the Seattle Times. By that time Valve should have got some good feedback about the Steam Machines, Steam Controller and Steam OS we heard a lot about during the last month.

The most recent user number tally for Microsoft’s Xbox Live totals 48 million and Sony’s PlayStation Network has 110 million users.



HEXUS Forums :: 15 Comments

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I've only just in the last six months opened a Steam account, largely due to the Humble Bundles. I've bought more games in that time than I have in the previous 2 years combined but probably spent a heck of a lot less. There's some absolute bargains to be had and it is extremely convenient especially compared to the abortion that is Origin…I say long live Steam, they are driving the resurgence in PC gaming and that can only be a good thing.
Been with steam since Half-Life2 and stopped aquiring games via other means not that long after.

I want a game when I want it.. not if we can just stop this stupid Friday release for X country and Tuesday for Y country balls we are onto a winner !

Also just need to get the Movie industry to understand that Piracy is more about availability then lack of will to pay.
Valve absolutely deserves all the love it gets, the games are cheap, the discounts are amazing, they've created some great games themselves.

I'm pretty sure Humble Bundle and other great bundles have a lot to do with the user growth especially this year.
Steam is my preferred go to service for games. I've had xbox live gold for a year and can honestly say I don't miss it. Psn isn't any better but I do have PSN+ for the free games on my vita. I hate origin with a passion. I've spent more cash through steam than all other services combined (maybe even 100x more). The massive sales and freedom to download on multiple machines far out way any issues with the service.
Great !

I to started with Half Life 2 and to be honest from the beginning i never really understood how it worked properly .Now i love it :)