Traditional retail outlets sell lion's share of Xbox Live Gold memberships

MCV has revealed that bricks and mortar retailers have played a major part in the uptake of Xbox Live Gold memberships, selling 68 percent of the service's European subscriptions.

Over two-thirds of European Xbox Live Gold members purchased their subscriptions at retail, Xbox Live's EMEA marketing manager Robin Burrowes has revealed, before going on to say that Microsoft is "continuing to talk to retail in different ways," to best appraise how all parties can benefit from the service's success.

"We are looking to introduce new digital innovations to drive more business," said Burrowes. "We’ve been testing electronic software distribution in a couple of places. We will be testing point-of-sale activation, which is similar to buying cards in store and being able to redeem that code at the point of purchase. We are introducing new digital tokens and are working very closely with retailers. 68 per cent of Europe’s Xbox Live subscription acquisitions come from retail.”

Burrowes added that there are no immediate plans for day-one digital downloads alongside retail boxed releases on account of the firm being "very respectful of the retail environment".

Furthermore, customers buying particular games at retail this Christmas will receive codes for DLC or XBLA games, all the more incentive to walk down the road to your local real-world purveyor of video games.

“For certain Kinect games out this Christmas there will be codes included," confirmed Burrowes. "Sometimes we will be doing: buy a subscription card and get some points which can redeemed against movies or games. We are continuing to innovate that.”