Tot in tegenstelling van wat iedereen verwachte, kwam Halo: Reach deze week niet op nummer één binnen als meest gespeelde game van het Xbox Live Netwerk. Major Nelson excuseerde zich snel dat er wat vage problemen waren met de tot stand komen van de lijst. Bungie is fookin' pissed off op Larry Hryb (de echte naam van Major Nelson) en claimen nu op hun website dat deze Halo: Reach vanaf dat hij in de winkels lag de meeste gespeelde game is en komen nu met de onderstaande cijfers.

Don't believe everything that you read. A wise man once said that. Pretty sure it was Beck.

On Wednesday, Xbox LIVE's Major Nelson published the latest Xbox LIVE Activity report for the week of September 13th, and much to many a fan's shock, chagrin, and horror, Halo: Reach was outclassed by not one, but two titles - the second being our very own battle-tested (but still subtly beautiful) Halo 3.

The "news" spread far and wide like the fifth shot from your DMR (I see you out there spamming the trigger, Annie Oakley), but it turned out that reports of Halo: Reach's demise had been greatly exaggerated. Major Nelson quickly made good with a retraction, noting that the LIVE Activity chart included a "manual reporting error," and further remarking that Halo: Reach has now held the number one spot on the Xbox LIVE charts for a full seven days running.

So, breathe easy. You can go back to enjoying the game now. Crisis adverted.

And that's really the only metric we care about. Twelve days in, we hope you've been able to squeeze a ton of fun out of the succulent fruits of our labor. We've been having an absolute blast mixing it up with you in matchmaking (with the exception of our online, test, and engineering teams who have been kicking ass around the clock to keep a million moving parts from going up in a blaze of hot molten glory).

We tooted our own horn yesterday, too, blasting some stats of our own into the cold, blackness of cyberspace. In case you missed our self-aggrandizing, here are the tastier morsels, lovingly segmented out for your viewing pleasure. (Don't worry, we double checked 'em for accuracy.)

On Tuesday, 09/14/2010 at approximately 1:30 pm PST, just a few hours after launch, Halo: Reach's online unique user count had already completely eclipsed Halo 3's total tally for the entirety of the week (09/13 through 09/20).

To account for the same number of online players found in Halo: Reach during that same window (just six days), we had to run the numbers for Halo 3 going all the way back to 8/6/2010, encompassing a full 45 days of Halo 3 play!

Ultimately, Halo: Reach's online population for the first week dwarfed Halo 3's by comparison, snagging four times the number of total unique users and decimating Halo 3's all time high of concurrent users by more than 65%.


And, of course, the requisite numerical absurdities:

70 Million+ Games have been played

235 Million+ Player-Games have been played

2 Million+ Files have been uploaded to File Shares

5,901 man-years have been spent in online Reach games (sorry, Corporate America!)

20 Million Daily challenges have been completed

709,840 Weekly challenges have been completed

165 Billion Credits have been earned


Thanks for playing!