Xbox Live: 6 million strong and counting

Microsoft's crystal ball is apparently a little cloudy. Last October, the company boasted that its Xbox Live service had reached 4 million subscribers, and predicted 6 million subscribers would be on board by this summer.

Well, they were off. Fortunately for Microsoft investors, they were off in a good way.

Today, the software giant announced that it has reached 6 million Xbox Live subscribers well ahead of schedule and released a list of various statistics touting its success in the gaming market.

Among the highlights:

--10 million Xbox 360s have hit stores across 37 countries
--Xbox 360 software attach rate (games sold per console) is 4.6 in the US; accessory attach rate stands at 2.9
--2.3 billion hours (260,000 years) have been logged on Xbox Live since its debut in November 2002; Halo 2 leads all games with 710 million hours
--Average Gold level XBL subscriber has 22 friends on their friends list
--more than 2 million text and voice messages are sent over Xbox Live on an average day
--almost 300 million achievements have been unlocked for a total Gamerscore of almost 7.5 billion
--XBL Arcade downloads have topped 25 million; Street Fighter II' Hyper Fighting, Bankshot Billiards, Marble Blast Ultra, UNO, DOOM are the top downloaded games, in that order