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Major Nelson Spurs Controversy With Faulty Top Ten List
Every week Microsoft's Major Nelson posts a list of the most-played 360 games on Xbox Live, based on unique users. When he posted the results for the week of September 13, however, Halo fans instantly cried foul: Halo: Reach debuted at a dismal third place, behind both Modern Warfare 2 and Halo 3. So Halo sucks, end of story -- right? Not so fast!
Shortly after the brouhaha over the Top Ten list began, Major Nelson issued a correction, which moved Halo: Reach up to the number two spot, still falling behind Modern Warfare 2. He also issued an explanation that blamed the mistake on a "manual error in the reporting data," and followed it up with a self-deprecating tweet that stated "Maths is hard."
Bungie responded to the mix up with its own statement. Among the highlights of Bungie's informative post are the following few stats:
- Within 24 hours of launching, Halo: Reach already had more unique users playing the game online than Halo 3 did for the entire week (9/13-9/20).
- In the first six days since launch, Halo: Reach had the same number of online players as the previous 45 days of Halo 3.
- Players have already logged more than 5,901 man-years into Halo: Reach.
Major Nelson's explanation states that Halo: Reach has been the most played game on Xbox Live for the past seven days, so we're pretty confident that Bungie's latest game will take the number one spot from Modern Warfare 2 when this week's numbers come out. But Bungie has provided some compelling evidence that Halo: Reach may have been the reigning champ last week as well. Without definitive numbers we'll never know which game was truly the most popular, but one thing is for sure: Major Nelson needs to enroll in some remedial math classes ASAP. In fact, we're starting to question whether he's really even a Major at all...
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