In the three months that flew by, Xfire jumped from a mere 6.5 million registered user base to a whopping 7+ million, all over the world. Since the free online service, thanks to Xfire's in-game IM widget, caters to over 800 PC games (which includes MMOs) worldwide, it should be interesting to find out what Xfire's Xstatics numbers pull out for the month of April and May.

According to Mike Cassidy, CEO of Xfire, the current user base now provides 14,300 man-years on gameplay and activity within the community. And that's just for the month of March alone. There's a wealth of information that marketers and game developers could tap into, because instead of focusing on single region or market alone, Xfire actually monitors what gamers play everyday, wherever they are.

According to the official press release, Xfire is also currently hosting an invitational Counter-Strike: Source tournament for North America. The competition, called "The Ridiculously Long Lasting Stride Xfire Cup 2007," is sponsored by Stride Gum and offers US$ 24,000 in prizes for the participating North American teams.

In an interview over at Gamasutra, CEO and co-founder of Xfire, Mike Cassidy, voiced his opinions on the Windows Live service. Apart from that, he also talked about the growth of the PC-based instant messaging service and gaming server tracker that some PlayStation 3 games use, Xfire.

Cassidy notes that at this point they don't fully understand the features/pricing and usage scenarios of Microsoft's Live service for Windows. He notes that they believe that gamers will not want to pay for multiplayer functionality, especially since the said feature has been traditionally free on the PC.

When asked if he sees if the Games for Windows branding as a threat, especially since the games on the brand will inevitably be linked to the Live service, he notes that while they're careful to watch what the competition is doing, they're very much confident in the strength and loyalty of their user-base.

Cassidy notes that integration of the Xfire service with the Xbox 360 has been more difficult than with other console partners. When asked about previous comments that he made that implied that they were in talks with other console makers - Gamasutra speculates an Xfire service for the Nintendo Wii - Cassidy can only tease, saying: "stay tuned..."

While they did experience some problems with integrating Xfire for Vista, he notes that everything is pretty much working well at the moment. Difficulties encountered included the new desktop rendering system of Vista, and the User Access Controls.

Oh, and before we end this, here's a little something for all the Mac gamers out there who feel a little left out. Mike Cassidy says:

The Mac user-base is very passionate. Although only a few top games are released simultaneously for the Mac and PC, Mac gamers have regularly asked us to create a version of Xfire for them. We are committed to supporting as many gaming platforms as we can as long as they have a large enough user-base. However, prioritization of projects is an ongoing battle.

As interesting as Mike Cassidy's words are, our utopian dream is still a true cross-platform "PSWii60PC" messaging service. One, can dream right? For the complete interview, feel free to head to Gamasutra's post via our "read" link below.