Over 70 Million Halo: Reach Games Played

Bungie's released updated stats for Halo: Reach's launch week, confirming the prequel has already clocked up more than 70 million games played.



Everything about the game is tracked, right down to shots fired.



- On Tuesday, September 14 at approximately 1:30pm 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 per cent.



And a few more stats:



- 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

- 20 Million Daily challenges have been completed

- 709,840 Weekly challenges have been completed

- 165 Billion Credits have been earned

Halo: Reach And Modern Warfare 2 Vie For Most Online Play

Halo Reach Gets Beat Out By MW2 In 1st Week

                     

    According to statistics released yesterday by Microsoft's Major Nelson, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 , but the statistics only cover the dates between September 13 and 19. Reach came out on September 14, so next week will be the true test of whether MW2 will be toppled from its spot on the top of the "charts" it's held for nearly a year.

Interestingly, online platform Raptr has released its own statistics that show that Halo: Reach has beaten MW 2, and that Modern Warfare 2's playtime has dropped by 50 percent since Reach was released. Raptr's numbers reflect Raptr users as opposed to the general population of Live users, though.



Anyway, the weekly top online titles from Major Nelson are below:

Xbox 360 Top LIVE Titles

1 Modern Warfare 2


2 Halo: Reach

3 Halo 3

4 Call of Duty: WaW

5 FIFA Soccer 11 Dem

6 FIFA 10

7 Call of Duty 4 (Purchase the full game for direct download)

8 Madden NFL 11

9 GTA IV (Purchase the full game for direct download)

10 Battlefield Bad Co. 2

11 Gears of War 2

12 Red Dead Redemption

13 Halo 3: ODST

14 Forza Motorsport 3 (Download the demo)

15 Left 4 Dead 2

16 NBA 2K11 Demo

17 NHL 11

18 NCAA Football 11

19 Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 Demo

20 Madden NFL 10

So, what do you guys think? Is next week going to be the first in which Halo: Reach is in the top Live spot?

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With Latest Launch, Halo Could Reach New Heights

   
     This special Halo: Reach kit consists of a metal briefcase that opens to revel a series of Halo-related items.



(Credit: Matt Fitzgerald/CNET) There's probably no better way to determine who's a hard-core Xbox player and who's not than this: do they play Halo?



On November 15, 2001, the then relatively low-profile video game development studio Bungie, which at the time was owned by Microsoft, released what would become one of the most significant game titles ever--Halo: Combat Evolved.



No one knew it at the time, but this storyline, spelled out in the game's manual--for Microsoft's original Xbox, not the Xbox 360--ushered in what is now nine years and the six titles of what is easily one of the most successful franchises in entertainment:





The year is 2552. Planet Earth still exists, but overpopulation has forced many of her former residents to colonize other worlds. Faster-than-light travel is now a reality, and Earth's unified government, through the United Nations Space Command, has put its full weight behind the colonization effort. Millions of humans now live on habitable planets in other solar systems. A keystone of humanity's colonization efforts is the planet Reach, an interstellar naval yard that builds colony ships for civilians and warships for the UNSC's armed forces. Conveniently close to Earth, Reach is also a hub of scientific and military activity.









Thirty-two years ago, contact with the outer colony Harvest was lost. A battlegroup sent to investigate was almost completely destroyed; only one badly damaged ship returned to Reach. Its crew told of a seemingly unstoppable alien warship that had effortlessly annihilated their forces.



This was humankind's first encounter with a group of aliens they eventually came to know as the Covenant, a collective of alien races united in their fanatical religious devotion. Covenant religious elders declared humanity an affront to the gods, and the Covenant warrior caste waged a holy war upon humanity with gruesome diligence. After a series of crushing defeats and obliterated colonies, UNSC Admiral Preston Cole established the Cole Protocol: no vessel may inadvertently lead the Covenant to Earth. When forced to withdraw, ships must avoid Earth-bound vectors--even if that means jumping without proper navigational calculations. Vessels in danger of capture must self-destruct.



On Reach, a secret military project to create cyborg super-soldiers takes on newfound importance. The soldiers of the Spartan-II project rack up an impressive record against the Covenant in test deployments, but there are too few of them to turn the tide of the war.



Existing Spartan-II soldiers are recalled to Reach for further augmentation. The plan: board a Covenant vessel with the improved Spartan-IIs and learn the location of the Covenant home world. Two days before the mission begins, Covenant forces strike Reach and annihilate the colony. The Covenant are now on Earth's doorstep. One ship, the Pillar of Autumn, escapes with the last Spartan-II and makes a blind jump into deep space, hoping to lead the Covenant away from Earth.





In the worlds of video games, there are many developers and publishers that herald their franchises as among the most successful of all time. Of course, it can be hard to measure which are actually the most successful of all time, since there are many different metrics--unit sales, revenues, number of users, hours of play, and so on. But there is no doubt that Halo counts among the top tier, joining the likes of Guitar Hero, Call of Duty, The Sims, and so on. According to VGChartz, which tracks sales, the five existing Halo titles--Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo Wars, and Halo 3: ODST--have sold a total of 33.5 million units for the Xbox, and that doesn't include additional versions of some of those titles that were released for Windows and other platforms.



Of course, among console players, no one has played any Halo title on any of Sony's PlayStations, or Nintendo's Wii, given that the franchise has always been an Xbox exclusive. And while Bungie developed four of the five existing titles, there was a brief moment in 2009 (Halo Wars) when Ensemble Studios took over for Bungie, which had severed official ties with Microsoft in 2007. But with Halo 3: ODST and now, Halo: Reach, he now independent Bungie stepped right back into the breach and took back the Halo reins--and returned it to the top of the charts after Halo Wars' less than stellar sales performance.



And while it's been years since Microsoft released its Xbox 360 and moved the Halo franchise onto that platform with the massively successful Halo 3, it was only recently that the very last players were forced to step away from playing Halo 2 on Xbox Live via their original Xboxes.



Over the years, Halo has become such a cultural touchstone that not only is there a movie version in the works--it is scheduled for a 2012 release--but "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson is on board as its executive producer, and actor Kevin James is said to be slated to play Master Chief.



Now, with Halo: Reach finally in stores--and likely on millions of players' Xboxes--the franchise has taken its next step. Last February, Bungie let the cat out of the bag, revealing that the game is a standalone prequel to the franchise, offering fans a fully original story and a number of new characters, as well as a scale beyond what the developer has done with any previous Halo title. At the time the company said that the new game will have a much darker story line than its predecessors and is centered around "a key turning point in the Human-Covenant War," said Bungie creative director Marcus Lehto.



In the game, which takes place in 2552, the planet Reach is mankind's final line of defense against the Covenant, as well as home to the human military, the Spartan program. Halo: Reach focuses on the Noble Team, a single group of Spartans, led by a character called Carter 259.



But, if you're reading this, you're no doubt one of the hard core. And you already knew all this.



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10 Pre-launch Halo: Reach Facts You Need To Know

Everything you need to know about Halo: Reach ahead of next week's launch.

Halo: Reach is out on Tuesday and to be honest, we can’t wait to get stuck right into the campaign, the insanely customisable multiplayer and the Forge World creation kit. It may feel like a long wait for gamers who have watched development of Halo: Reach trundle along these past few years, but we can confidently say that the wait has been worth it, as it’s the most impressive Halo game we’ve played to date.

Best Halo yet? We'll say yes, definitely

So with that in mind we thought we’d discuss ten awesome Halo: Reach facts that you need to know before you pick up the game on launch day.

“It's the most impressive Halo game we've played to date.”

10. Meet Noble Team

The feeling of invincibility in the green boots of Master Chief never quite sat right with us throughout the series. Legendary was no cakewalk sure, but on solo runs through lesser difficulty settings, we felt way too powerful. The members of Noble team are Spartan III’s meaning they are less powerful and prone to dying easier. The player controls Noble Six, while the other members each offer various support methods. Jun’s sniping is a treat in the game’s stealthier moments, Emile is simply a no-nonsense hard case, while Cat and Carter both offer up oodles of personality. Our pick is Jorge, simply because he has a minigun that would make Bill Duke in Predator blush and the fact he can stand on top of civilian vehicles, essentially turning them into makeshift Warthogs. Noble Team really is a force to be reckoned with and they stand as some of the Halo series’ best characters yet.

Sorry Bill, there's a new sheriff in town

9. Skulls 2.0

The subject of Halo FAQ guides everywhere, the elusive skull pick-ups are back in Halo: Reach, although this time they are customisable in multiplayer. It’s simply a genius move from Bungie, blowing Halo: Reach’s customisation wide open. You can now set up a game of Firefight and set the intervals skulls come into play and how they affect combat. For example, you can make enemies return fire more frequency, double their speed and quadruple their health if you wanted to. But only if you’re a glutton for punishment of course.

8. Firefight: Combat Evolved

Firefight was the jewel in Halo 3: ODST’s otherwise honky crown. The game didn’t match the thrills of the core series, but we did enjoy feeling vulnerable as a very human, very weak human character. Campaign aside, Firefight offered hours of fun and in Halo: Reach, it’s back with a vengeance. There are so many Firefight variants on offer, including generator defence, which tasks teams with protecting objective points against waves of Covenant. Rocketfight gives players unlimited rocket launcher ammo, while Gruntocalypse pits the team against massive waves of Grunts with too many grenades to count. The best option by far is to split the team into two Spartans and two Elites and have them face off with a horde of low-level Covenant swarming in from all sides. It’s just insanely fun.

7. Smart Cookie

Shooters lose massive kudos when they have dumb enemies. It’s always been the case and in this respect, Halo: Reach transcends the ranks of shooters with guff AI and delivers a genuine challenge against smart enemies with a ruthless desire to see you dead. Enemies will flank and back-attack without mercy, acting more like online enemy bots you would expect to see in top-tier arena shooters. Our hands on experience with Halo: Reach saw us caught with our pants down several times as Covenant enemies surrounded us unexpectedly. It simply makes the game more tense and much more engaging than previous Halo instalments.

6. What A Wonderful World

Halo: Reach is improved over its predecessors in many ways, but it also delivers the most atmospheric take on the universe so far. It’s a tragedy piece, so obviously it’s going to have tension dripping from every pixel. The planet itself tells a great story about how the Spartans were created to quell human insurgents.

Reach is a fantastic game world

You get to see the human plight on Reach first hand, experience the world’s native flora and fauna and marvel at the environmental beauty of it all. As a game world it just feels so painfully and meticulously fleshed out, standing tall against the Halo ring from Combat Evolved, or any other location in the series so far for that matter.

5. Open Fire!

The weapon set in Halo: Reach may not have been expanded upon that much since Halo 3, but each weapon has been given a little extra kick and weight, amplifying the gunplay and keeping the multiplayer balancing near-perfect. The best new addition to the gun roster is the Target Locator, a pistol that calls in an insanely powerful mortar strike with a devastating blast radius. Danger close is definitely a factor here as your team-mates in co-op will be toast if they get caught under the blast. Be careful not to lose any friends this way, it’s easily done.

4. LittleBigHalo

If Forge was Bungie’s way of dipping its toe into map creation, Forge World is confidently the full plunge. Giving you a full Halo ring world on which to build maps on, the Forge 2.0 toolkit lets you run riot with map creation to create complex, smartly-designed arenas. It’s simple to learn the basics of Forge 2.0, and only gradually harder to master thanks to an overhauled interface and creation methods. Forge World will likely keep Halo: Reach fans playing for years after launch.

Everything's better with jetpacks

3. Mo’ Money Less Problems

Halo: Reach multiplayerCortana and Master Chief himself. Clearly Johnson is the choice of the bad ass. Can we get an extra large stogie with that?

2. Armour-Up

Any credits earned in multiplayer can be spent in the armoury and we reckon this expansive toolkit of unlockable armour upgrades and neat collectibles will keep people playing for a very long time. Couple this with an advanced experience system and you have a pretty deep multiplayer component. More than just contributing to bragging rights, experience points actually change the way your character developers this time, adding new purpose to multiplayer.

1. Special Move

Armour abilities are real game-changers, helping player boost areas of their skill on a round-per-round basis. First and easily best of all is the jetpack, which adds a new level of verticality into the mix. Getting the drop on enemies is a treat, but you run the risk of leaving yourself totally vulnerable for long runs at a time. We also like the holographic decoy, which sends a clone of your avatar running in a straight line from where you deploy it, drawing heat away from your character. Meanwhile, Active Camo renders you partically invisible, Evade lets you perform dodge rolls, Sprint lets you run like the clappers and Drop Shield offers a temporary healing bubble shield. All in all, it’s a great selection box of skills that shake up the Halo multiplayer formula drastically.


So, please pre-order Halo Reach now or you'll be wining when you don't get yours till Thursday. The Preorders At amazon and Microsoft ship the date of release so you'll be playing by the night of September 14.  Getting it at midnight release is just a waste of time, gas, money, and gaming. So gamers, preorder your Halo Reach copy below or any other gaming supplies.

Super Fast Free  Shipping For Halo Reach  Here