Microsoft has today revealed that it now has some six million subscribers to its Xbox Live service worldwide - and the giant has hit this figure four months ahead of schedule.

Microsoft previously announced at E3 that it expected to double the Live audience from three million to six million by the end of June.

Other stats announced by the firm include the fact that since the launch of Xbox Live in November 2002, gamers have spent over 2.3 billion hours on the network playing games online around the world. This equates to 95 million days of gaming or over 260,000 years.

Xbox Live on Xbox 360 continues to grow as a social community, with Microsoft seeing an average of over two million text and voice messages sent every day between members.

And to date Xbox 360 owners have unlocked nearly 300 million Achievements. Those unlocked Achievements have created a total combined Gamerscore of nearly 7.5 billion.

Meanwhile the top three Xbox Live titles on 360 to date are Halo 2, Gears of War and Hexic HD.