As a part of Gamefest 2006, Microsoft has released some of the statistics driving Xbox Live Marketplace and their lessons learned over the past year. 1up reports on the details. Touting the availability of demos as drivers of game sales, Microsoft reported that 40% of the downloaders of the demo version of EA’s Fight Night Round 3 eventually purchased the game. It is hard to really judge the success of the demo as a sales driver, though. 60% of the people that downloaded the demo still did not purchase the game; of the remaining 40% one can not really say how many downloaders would have bought the game anyway.

Microsoft also outlined the top download categories on the Marketplace service. Demos lead, with trailers second and Arcade titles third. Not surprisingly, free content seems to be the biggest draw. 80% of Xbox 360 owners have downloaded a file from the Xbox Live Marketplace, but only 25% have used Marketplace Points. This seems to be a shockingly low number. The Points packaging price points may have something to do with this, there may be a lack of interest in the paid content available, or security might be a concern. Certainly, some of the paid content providers like Activision have seen benefits to their bottom line, but bottom line adoption rates need to rise. Microsoft also stressed that the timing of releases will have a lot to do with their success. Overall, for the first year in implementation, Microsoft’s Marketplace seems to be gaining adopters. It will be interesting to see if Sony and Nintendo can learn from Microsoft’s implementation for their download services.