Xbox Live hits $1 Billion in Sales

The interesting part about this article from Bloomberg is that more than half of Xbox Live revenue comes from something other than subscriptions. Sure, there's 25 million people who pay for the yearly subscription (heck, I'm one of them). But now revenue has topped $1.2 billion, and that comes mostly from downloads of movies, games, avatars, and other such stuff (map packs, anyone?).

This week Microsoft plans to revise the interface and update the search capabilities; it'll be interesting to see how that works. Will we see more game sales? Will indie games do better? Or is this going to be more about movie sales?

Microsoft is wise to put some effort in here, as the family room is going to be a major battleground for consumer companies. They have a big lead now, but that could easily evaporate if they come up against a superior business model. (For an example, see how Blackberry and Nokia market shares have been vaporizing in the face of iPhone and Android... it's not just the hardware that's causing it.)

I'm still wondering if any of these market-makers (Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc.) are planning to help app creators with marketing tools, or if they will continue to be left to their own devices. Amazon, for one, seems to be interested in offering authors, at least, some help in promoting their books. It seems like a win-win... so why doesn't that idea get picked up by other companies?