The Casual Connect USA conference went down earlier this week in Seattle, Washington, and mega games publisher and digital game distributor, Valve made an appearance at the show. While there wasn't any talk on Half-life 3 (sad face), they did mention that their digital games platform, Steam has grown to host over 67 million active monthly users.
What's significant about that is that the number is greater than that of Xbox Live's most recent tally, which comes in at around 53 million.
A large part of Steam's growth has come from the Asian market, which has grown to take over about 17% of the platform's overall sales numbers. Valve’s Tom Giardino correlated the growth to the localization of its stores and the additional payment methods that the platform now supports.
Xbox has traditionally struggled to develop its player base in Asia, particularly in the Eastern parts. But there's a case to be made that Steam is the most readily available platform there is, since anyone with a laptop can create a free account, so its growth shouldn't be considered all that much of a surprise. Couple in the significant growth that China has seen recently in gaming, and you can probably expect Steam to see even more growth into the future.
Source: [Techspot]
