I see Halo players are still playing on average less than 3 matches a day. 793,873 players is a lot, but it's still odd that they're playing so few matches considering that population.

Right.. but the average is far less than that. Meaning, for all of the people who play 5+ matches a night, there must be thousands playing like, .5-1 match per night. Now that's a dedicated audience ;)

True, no other console game does come close to those numbers. It just continues to be an odd disparity between the number of people playing and the number of overall matches they play. I think it's probably in the top three played online (FPS) overall, maybe in the top five overall online games period.

Counter Strike 1.6 and Source both probably beat it. For instance, there are currently 166,617 (down from well over 200,000 people earlier in the day) people playing CS and 76,163 people playing Source (and an additional 20,000 playing condition zero). In overall time played, I'd be willing to wager that both games probably trump Halo 3's numbers on a daily basis. And yeah--World of Warcraft. So no, I doubt it's in the top 3 overall.

Unfortunately, no one tracks Call of Duty 4's numbers, which combined from the 360, PC, and PS3 versions probably puts it well above Battlefield 2 at this point (currently ~20,000 players logged in)--hell--I imagine the PC userbase alone probably trumps BF2's numbers at this point, which would easily put it in the top 3-4 overall if you could find combined numbers.. but you can't. :/

And what's really remarkable about that--CS is what, 10 years old? Can you imagine people playing Halo 3 in ten years? I know I can't.

Yea but they'll only play one game.

Oh, and PS: Not according to bungie.net (#Halo 3 Players Online: 150,363)

I'll have to give it a go when I get the chance. I did enjoy the MLG settings in Halo 2, so I can't imagine that it isn't good stuff.

PS. It's up over 175,000 players now--still not 300,000+ though.

I guess Bungie is lying (to one of us)--I guarantee that those numbers are totally skewed by either guests or people playing campaign/co-op. I trust their websites tracker--it seems much more reasonable. But it would make sense if there were more people on.. I mean.. after all.. they need to get up to that 800,000 mark where people play one match a day!

In time played, Halo 3 will never approach CS, which will keep on going on for ages while Halo 3 will slowly die off as we move into the next generation. Sure, there are 20 thousand people who play Halo 2 in any given day, but that's not many, considering the console population as a whole. That would be a lot, if it were a PC game (that didn't start with the words "Counter Strike").

Even if Bungie's in game stats mean what you think they mean, I'm willing to bet in time spent it still doesn't even come close to CS 1.6's numbers on a 24 hour basis, day to day. After all, players only play a game or two on average.

Yes there is.

CS is 8 (corrected--doesn't change the point/facts much though) years old and still clocks more than 8 billion player minutes per month (9 billion if you count condition zero--11 if you count CSS). That number hasn't gone up over the last few years, and you're crazy if you think that Halo 3 is clocking more than 8 billion player minutes monthly. Counter Strike (alone, not including source--which if you do would dwarf it even more significantly) easily has out paced the entire franchise in total playtime.

Consider this: Halo 3 has the largest population that the franchise has ever had, and even at ~1.5 million games daily over 31 days, averaging at ~15 minutes (which I think is a fair estimate) you're looking at less than 7 billion player minutes in that time frame.

I won't deny that in certain ways, it's easily the most popular FPS franchise ever (note: that doesn't mean best)--especially when you look at the run away success from a sales perspective. But those 800,000 individual players are logging less than 2 games per day on average, which isn't adding up to the total play time that Counter Strike's continued popularity is. When you consider Counter Strikes age into that equation, the total playtime over the last several years is immense and easily dwarfs Halo's MP in player minutes.

It's not like I'm denying its popularity, or even that it's among the top 3-5 played games online, globally.. it's just not the most played FPS ever.. by a longshot I'd imagine, when you account for the eight year lead CS has on the game, even if you were to consider the first two installments in the franchise towards its total numbers. More people play it than COD4, that's for sure (which on PC currently has an average population of 20,000+ players, there are no numbers for the 360 but I'm sure they're larger). Good thing we've already established that popularity and quality are completely separate issues ;)

My GOTY for Xbox 360, easily. I love Call of Duty 4, but there's certain things about the console conversion that make me prefer the PC version in a big, big way. Halo 3 is more feature rich in that environment, and the movement and aiming is more well suited to a gamepad, too.