"Up until fairly recently we just haven't had enough on the service for non-English speaking folks," he told gaming magazine Edge, as relayed by CVG. "On a community service like Live, [you need] enough people of a similar language orientation to get a community so that it starts to really blow out."

According to Lewis, the "lion's share" of Xbox Live members are located within North America, with the majority of European Xbox Live users being UK residents.

He explained that in France, Microsoft "only recently started to get figures where you've got enough French-speaking folks getting a rich enough experience to talk about it meaningfully to their friends."

Two levels of Xbox Live service are available for Xbox 360 owners: the free Silver membership, which allows users to buy downloadable content such as movies and games, and the subscription-based Gold level, required for online multiplayer.