Modern Warfare 2, Halo: Reach MP unfazed by Medal of Honor launch

Two weeks ago, Electronic Arts released its reboot of Medal of Honor, which transported the once World War II-exclusive franchise into the ongoing Afghanistan war. The game was the subject of controversy from its inception, given that it initially allowed players to play as the Taliban in multiplayer mode. Though that option was removed at the last minute, the game's mixed reviews were blamed for a one-day, 6 percent drop in EA stock.

Last week, EA hit back, revealing the game had sold 1.5 million copies worldwide, generating over $100 million dollars. Now, online game service (and GameSpot partner) Raptr has released play statistics garnered from its millions of users that show how the game was played--and how it stacked up against rivals in the first-person shooter genre.

According to Raptr's study, which used data from the Xbox 360 version of the game, Medal of Honor did not disrupt play time patterns in other popular shooters--a trend Raptr described as "unheard of." Not only did Medal of Honor's launch fail to put a dent in Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2's online play time, those shooters' average play times went up during the EA effort's first week on the market. By contrast, when Halo: Reach launched, Modern Warfare 2 play time dropped by 40 percent and Bad Company 2 play time dropped by 50 percent. When Bad Company 2 launched, it took 20 percent of play time away from Modern Warfare 2, according to Raptr.

Raptr also found that Medal of Honor was played an average of 3.93 hours during its launch week. By comparison, 4.31 hours of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 were played during launch week, versus 6.17 hours of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and 6.19 hours of Halo: Reach.

Raptr, which also tracks achievement data, found that the roughly the same number of players completed Medal of Honor (35 percent) as did Halo: Reach (37 percent) in single-player mode in the game's first week on the market. The game's week-one multiplayer stats were also in line with Bad Company 2 and Halo: Reach, with between 61 and 62 percent of all players spending at least 15 minutes playing multiplayer mode.