Case in point, a few weeks ago Microsoft claimed that over 17 million people were "now active members" of its Xbox Live online community. Of the roughly 28 million total Xbox 360s in the wild, that's about 60%.

That sounds impressive, but since Microsoft breaks Xbox Live into two tiers -- one free that gives access to basic online features, one that costs US$50 annually and effectively allows players to compete with each other online -- the number's effectively meaningless.

A few days ago, a leaked internal Excel sheet headlined by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer helped give that number teeth by revealing that slightly less (but still over half -- 56 percent ) of Xbox Live members in fact pay to use the service.

Assuming the document's credible, it finally puts a number on the percent of Xbox 360 owners willing to subsidize the service to the tune of roughly $4 a month. that Microsoft should render Xbox Live free, after its elimination of the similar annual subscriber fee associated with its PC-based Games For Windows Live. Now I know why no one's likely to listen.

56 percent of 28 million equals roughly 15.7 million users. Multiply by the annual fee and you're looking at $784 million in revenue. No wonder Microsoft's Don Mattrick claimed last July that gamers have spent