The hype for Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops has been incredible, and it seems like the game's launch this week is off to a stellar start. Developer Treyarch has already noted that there were 1 million concurrent users playing the title on Xbox Live in the first hour. Separately, IndustryGamers has observed last night and during the day today around 3.5 million users playing the game on Microsoft's service. This is our self-reported figure from in-game statistics when connected to Xbox Live.
We also came across this picture, as further evidence of Black Ops at least being above 3 million users at one point.
The Xbox Live service as a whole hit a record 2 million concurrent users last November, thanks to Modern Warfare 2. More recently, Bungie announced that its Halo: Reach had broken the record held by Halo 3 for concurrent users on Xbox Live.
At this point, the numbers for Black Ops are still unverified. With the record for all of Xbox Live standing at 2 million users, we find it a bit hard to believe that Black Ops could have managed 3.5 million alone. It could be that the system has a glitch or is not in real time and is showing a period of 24 hours. We've reached out to Activision and Treyarch and will keep you posted as we get official word.
