A study by web analytics firm Sandvine has found Xbox One downloads the 8th largest contributor to downstream web traffic in the US. Specifically, the firm reports that Xbox One game downloads accounted for 2.18% of during the study period.
Of course, Xbox still had nothing on the US’s biggest websites. Netflix came first by a landslide at 35.15%, while YouTube was at 17.53. Amazon Video, iTunes, and Hulu followed, with percentages of 4.26, 2.91, and 2.68.
Though the PS4 didn’t make the list, it’s worth noting that this doesn’t necessarily give an indication of popularity. The difference could be the result of any number of factors, such as larger game downloads for exclusives.
However, it could hint that digital downloads are more popular on Xbox. Microsoft has been providing a lot of incentives to users recently, bridging the price gap between physical Amazon purchases and digital copies.
Whatever the case, it’s an interesting tidbit. Xbox didn’t make the ranking in last year’s study, so there’s clearly been an increase somewhere. Unfortunately, Sandvine doesn’t offer much insight into why, so it’s all guesswork for now.
Skype and Upstream
As well as downloads, Sandvine monitored uploads. While BitTorrent remains at the top at 18.37%, Skype also made a small appearance. The application accounted for 1.75% of traffic, below Apple’s Facetime at 2.50%. The different could be due to compression, rather than popularity.
While Google Cloud and iCloud sat at 6.98% and 5.98%, Microsoft’s cloud services didn’t make the ranking. This speaks somewhat to OneDrive’s lack of consumer market share, but could also be down to other factors.
Despite the interesting numbers of the study, it’s worth noting that benchmarks from this study are from March 2016. Though there were no huge exclusive releases, this could skew the results, as could the release of new cloud features of variations in streaming habits.
Still, it gives a solid indication of the shift in traffic year-to-year, and you can find the full report on the Sandvine site.
