Recently it was “announced” that Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has reached 13 million unique users on Xbox 360. As you might of gleamed title, I call shenanigans. Community manager of Infinity Ward Robert Bowling (a.k.a. fourzerotwo) was on the Major Nelson podcast talking about Modern Warfare 2 and a little bit about CoD 4. The two were talking about multiplayer and success of CoD 4 and Bowling mentioned that they have reached 13 million users on the Xbox 360, here is the full quote:

The thing we learned about the most, probably, is how much focus goes into multiplayer. I mean Call of Duty 4 on Xbox LIVE just exploded. I mean right now we’re at 13 million unique users on 360, and that’s insane.

Really Bowling, 13 million users seems way off no matter what angle I look at it from. At least clarify things: I don’t know if he means actual Gold memberships that actually play online, LIVE accounts that have played the game at all, or even Silver accounts playing single player.

First off, as of CES earlier this year, it was reported that there were 17 million active Xbox LIVE accounts and that is including Silver memberships. Let’s be nice and say they have 20 million users today, and let’s be even nicer and say that half of those are Gold accounts. That brings us to 10 million Gold accounts, though the real number is probably closer to 6-7 million. Even if every single person with a Gold account has played CoD 4 online, it still doesn’t add up to the 13 million that Bowling stated. I think we can safely assume the 13 million has to include silver memberships in the mix.

Secondly, let us look at sales of the game itself. Estimates show game sales at around 7.5 million units for the Xbox 360 version. Unless you don’t know any fucking math, 7.5 million is a lot less than 13 million. I can think of three ways to end up with more people having played a game than were copies sold: videogame rentals, borrowing from a friend, or a roommates sharing one copy amongst multiple gamertags. I have no way of calculating the number of people who have played the game through these methods, but does it really equal the missing 5.5 million people?

The only way that the 13 million is anywhere close to believable is if we use cumulative numbers since release of all Gold and Silver members that have played the game either online or single player, and include people who have rented, borrowed, or used their roommate’s copy at some point. Only then does the 13 millions seems slightly feasible, with the emphasis on slightly.

Everything else aside, my greatest grievance with the magic 13 million number is how it’s being covered by the rest of the intrawebs. The magical number is being spoken as gospel by various sites out there on the ‘net, and one even had the stones to compare it to Wow for godsakes. So, to all of the videogame news sites and blogs that just feed the PR machine without pointing out the blatant bullshit, fuck you.