Analysis: Halo: Reach Unseats MW2 As Most Played XBL Game

Online gameplay tracking service Raptr revealed today that Halo: Reach has ended Modern Warfare 2's ten-month reign as the most popular game being played on Xbox Live. Raptr reports that play of Activision's late 2009 release have dropped 50 percent since Reach's launch last Tuesday, with the average Reach player already sinking over 23 hours into the game so far. Over 37 percent of Reach players tracked by Raptr have already completed the single-player campaign on Normal or higher difficulty, a number that approaches Raptr-reported completion rates of over 40 percent for Halo 3: ODST and over 42 percent for Halo 3. Raptr's statistics also show that first-person shooters represent seven out of ten of the most popular outside games played by Reach players, suggesting the title has been selling well among traditional FPS fans. Looking backward, Raptr found that the May 3rd launch of the Halo: Reach beta, which required a copy of Halo 3: ODST to play, caused a 7500 percent spike in ODST usage among Raptr users. While Raptr's statistics do not represent all Xbox Live users, or even a random sample of the entire group, the service bases their statistics on the "millions of users" who have signed up for the free service. [UPDATE: Microsoft's own Larry 'Major Nelson' Hryb concurs with the gist of the analysis, revealing this afternoon that "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 Sept. 13."]