Xbox Live had a new member every second during Christmas

According to Microsoft, a new member was welcomed to Xbox Live every second during the Christmas period.

The company also reiterated the peaktime record of users on the service simultaneously was at 2.2 million users, achieved during the Modern Warfare 2's launch week.

Last night at the company's CES keynote Microsoft's Robbie Bach said that over 20 million people were now Xbox Live users: half of which used social services introduced to Xbox 360 when introduced last November such as last.fm, Facebook, Twitter, Zune and Sky Player.

MS president Steve Ballmer announced at the same event that over 39 million Xbox 360s have been sold worldwide since the launch of the console in December 2005.