Halo 2 Hits Half a Billion Online
Bungie's shooter is the perennial Xbox Live top game and its popularity doesn't seem to be waning one bit.
Occasionally we'll report on the game standings on Xbox Live, but in reality there's little point. Everybody knows that Halo 2 is still the top game online, and it will probably stay the top game until Halo 3 arrives sometime next year. No surprise then than Bungie has revealed the extent of the game's dominance of the online space.
From 2004 until today, more than a half a billion games of Halo 2 have been played over Xbox Live, Bungie boasted on its Web site.
Halo 2 has been a phenomenon since it launched to record-setting sales just under two years ago, when it had what Microsoft called the biggest day in entertainment history, selling $125 million worth of games.
In the latest weekly charts of the most popular games on Xbox Live, courtesy of Microsoft's Larry Hryb, Halo 2 leads overall, with the rest of the list dominated by Xbox 360 games.
Next up for Master Chief is Halo 3 - the first Xbox 360 game for the series and the closing chapter in the trilogy. Microsoft has kept things hush-hush on the project, but we've been told to expect the game sometime during 2007.
Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games