Modern Warfare 2 still rules Xbox Live

The long awaited release of Halo Reach last week was the biggest games event of 2010 – but 2009’s gaming champ isn’t much impressed.

According to figures from Microsoft’s Larry Hyrb, Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was the most played game on Xbox Live for the week ending September 13th. Halo Reach claims number two in the list, one place ahead of Halo 3.

But Modern Warfare 2 had better prepare to stand down. Halo reach was released on September 14th, meaning the numbers come only from those who got the game early. Next week looks like it’s going to be a completely different story.

Hryb subsequently pointed out that looking at data fro the last seven days, Halo Reach is the clear champ.

I have just the list but I also wanted to share an interesting data point,” he explained. Halo: Reach was the number one game on Xbox Live for the past seven days and had nearly four times as many unique users playing the game on Xbox Live vs Halo 3 for the week of September 13th.”

Further stats from developer Bungie show that since release Halo Reach has been over 70m online game splayed already while 5,901 man years have been spent in the game.

In addition, in the week ending September 20th the number of online players in Halo Reach is the equivalent to the number who played Halo 3 over the last 45 days. In its first week four times as many people played Bungie’s latest title, smashing Halo 3’s concurrent user record by 65 per cent.