North American broadband networks observed an approximate 55% peak increase in the number of hosts using Xbox Live and an approximate 36% peak increase attributed to Xbox Live traffic in what was a very successful holiday season for the Xbox 360 Console.

Xbox Live hosts increase by a peak of 55% over the Christmas holiday

Xbox Live bandwidth consumption increased by a peak of 36%

The Christmas traffic surge comes after the substantial boom that Xbox live experienced with the launch of six new games, including the highly-anticipated ‘Gears of War’, on November 7th [read more].

The Xbox 360 sold 1.1 million units in December, giving it a 51% share of the next-generation console market.¹ Epic Games’ best-selling vehicle ‘Gears of War’ continues to post impressive sales, with just under 3 million copies sold to gamers in the 8 weeks after its release.²

Xbox 360 sales were fueled not only by the gaming experience, but also the TV shows and movies that are now offered through the Xbox Live Marketplace. Xbox Live traffic appears headed for an increase in the coming year as well, with Microsoft’s recent unveiling of Windows Vista and its cross-platform gaming functionality with the Xbox 360.³

"Applications such as gaming, VoIP, and streaming video can be adversely impacted by unpredictable jitter, latency, and packet loss that are characteristic of today's broadband networks. Adding additional capacity and bandwidth is key, but does not solve the problem, as bandwidth-intensive applications put pressure on available network resources," said Matt Davis, director, consumer multiplay, IDC. "Broadband providers want to ensure their subscribers continue to receive the best consumer experience possible with multimedia services they enjoy, like online gaming and music downloads over the Internet. Network monitoring and grooming capabilities allow them to anticipate the growth and types of traffic being consumed, allowing service providers to better manage network resources and provide an enhanced customer experience."

Using Sandvine’s deep-packet inspection (DPI) technology, service providers can choose from a suite of intelligent broadband network solutions that give them an early opportunity to identify subscriber usage trends for popular applications, and offer their subscribers a higher quality of experience for multimedia services by introducing new QoS-prioritized services.

Service providers can quickly understand gaming activity across their subscriber base using Sandvine Network Demographics reporting and then plan for better service delivery and targeted marketing. Sandvine’s broad identification of games and other applications ensure service providers are alerted to popular applications in advance, so they can offer appropriate QoS levels that enhance subscriber satisfaction.

Sandvine’s intelligent broadband network solutions offer a broad set of capabilities to identify application traffic and apply traffic policies that meet the service providers’ service goals and enhance subscribers’ online quality of experience.

Find out how much gaming traffic is on YOUR network; contact sales@sandvine.com.

Microsoft and Xbox are registered trademarks of Microsoft.

Download PDF of this trend analysis [here]

Sources:

1 Gamezone
2 Team Xbox News
3 Xbox.com