Halo 2, CoD 2 Remain Most-Played Xbox Live Games

Via the weblog of staffer Larry 'Major Nelson' Hryb, Microsoft has announced the top ten Xbox 360 games currently being played over Xbox Live for the week of August 7, 2006, as well as the top titles for the the original Xbox being played over (or while connected to) the online service. Activision and Infinity Ward's World War II first-person shooter Call of Duty 2 again ranked on top of the list of Xbox 360 titles being played over Xbox Live, followed by Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. The demo for Capcom's recently shipped Dead Rising was the third most popular Xbox Live title for the week, while Sega's From Software-developed mechanized strategy shooter Chromehounds and Bethesda Softworks' role-playing game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion took the fourth and fifth positions respectively for the week. Online MMORPG Final Fantasy XI was the sixth most played game over Xbox Live, followed by the demo for the upcoming THQ release Saints Row. A pair of games released by Electronic Arts represented both the eighth and ninth most played Xbox 360 games over Xbox Live for the week, with college football title NCAA 07 and Digital Illusions' next-generation port of Battlefield 2:Modern Combat respectively. The aforementioned zombie-fest Dead Rising rounded out the list in tenth. Interestingly, Major Nelson noted that Dead Rising is the first game to be included in the top 10 list twice, both as a downloadable demo and as the complete game. Looking to the original Xbox, Halo 2 remained as the most played game over Xbox Live for the week. Major Nelson added that if the lists were combined, Halo 2 would rank as the most played game across both platforms, followed by all ten Xbox 360 titles listed. Ranking second on the Xbox chart was Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, followed by Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. The Xbox port of Counter-Strike ranked fourth on the list, while Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Black Arrow and Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer 5 took the fifth and sixth positions on the chart. LucasArts' Star Wars Battlefront II ranked seventh on the list, followed by EA's Madden NFL 2006 and Microsoft's popular racing title Forza Motorsport in eight and ninth respectivly. The list of original Xbox titles being played over the online service was rounded out by Ubisoft's Rainbow Six 3 in tenth.