For the past few months there has been a slow and steady decline in the number of gamers playing Halo 3 online. The trend showed that as less people on friends lists could be seen playing Team Slayer, more and more could be seen playing Team Deathmatch in Call of Duty 4. The change from overdone World War 2 shooter to Modern Warfare must have been the right move, as Call of Duty 4 is now the new king of Xbox Live.

Xbox 360 Top Live Titles (based on Unique Users)
1 Call of Duty 4
2 Halo 3
3 Guitar Hero III
4 Gears of War
5 Rock Band
6 Madden NFL 08
7 Assassin's Creed
8 Mass Effect
9 FIFA 08
10 Forza Motorsport 2

Top Arcade Titles (Full Versions)
1 Metal Slug 3
2 Boogie Bunnies
3 Omega Five
4 TRON
5 UNO
6 Bomberman LIVE
7 TMNT 1989 Arcade
8 Sonic The Hedgehog 2
9 Worms
10 Marble Blast Ultra

In the weekly update on Major Nelson’s website he listed the top ten games played online for both Xbox 360 and the Xbox Live Arcade. There weren’t really any surprising results on the Arcade list (aside from how many people are playing Boogie Bunnies) but it is shocking that Call of Duty has ended Halo 3’s reign as soon as it did. Bungie must have been sure that they had at least a year of partying in the number one slot before a new title would take it over, but this was apparently not the case. People prefer the deeper experience that COD4 offers to the comparatively old fashioned run-and-gun experience of Halo.

That said, Halo still outsold everything by about seven billion copies, so I doubt Bungie is losing sleep about it.