Halo: Reach inched up a tick on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Top LIVE Titles list after what the company called “a manual error in the reporting data,” but still had to settle for second fiddle during its launch week.
Microsoft initially published its Top LIVE Activity List for the week of September 13th showing Halo: Reach in third place behind Halo 3, which launched back in 2007. The last installment in the series, Halo 3: ODST, slotted notably lower in 13th place.
Fending off Halo: Reach? Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which when you consider how insanely popular that game remains, should surprise no one.
Perhaps someone got a phone call, because Larry ‘Major Nelson’ Hryb was quick to add a bunch of conciliatory stats about Halo: Reach (not that he needed too, given the game’s record-breaking series launch sales). It sounds like Modern Warfare 2’s days are numbered, as, according to Hryb, Halo: Reach “was the number one game on Xbox LIVE for the past seven days [from September 23] and had nearly four times as many unique users playing the game on Xbox LIVE vs. Halo 3 for the week of Sept. 13.”
Hryb then offered a link to a Bungie stats page, which trots out some relatively impressive figures. Apparently 70 million Halo: Reach games have been played, two million files have been uploaded (players movies and pictures?), 20 million daily challenges have been completed, and 165 billion credits have been earned since the game’s launch.
Most impressive? Halo: Reach’s first week online population apparently eclipsed Halo 3’s for the same period. The game managed four times the number of total unique users and soared past Halo 3’s all time concurrent user high by more than 65%.
“You complete us,” wrote Bungie. (Who knew Bungie were fans of Keyshia Cole.)
In other news, it sounds like Halo: Reach isn’t faring as well overseas. The game only sold 44,413 copies in Japan, but then Halo’s never been popular in the Land of the Rising Sun. Instead, they’re snapping up Pokemon Black & White in droves, to the tune of some 2.6 million copies.
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