Skyrim soars past Battlefield 3 on XBL activity

Earlier this week, EA offered an update on Battlefield 3's sales figures, saying the multiplayer-centric first-person shooter has now sold some 8 million units. But despite those lofty figures, the game hasn't been able to keep up with Bethesda Softworks' latest role-playing game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on Xbox Live.

As revealed by Microsoft's Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb via his blog, Skyrim was the third most-played game by Xbox 360 users connected to Xbox Live for the week of November 21. Bethesda's latest RPG fell in just behind Activision's Call of Duty stalwarts Modern Warfare 3 and Black Ops. Battlefield 3 logged a fourth-place performance.

Skyrim's success has not been limited to the console space. In November, Bethesda parent company ZeniMax Media boasted that the game had set a new Steam record with more than 280,000 concurrent players logged in on Skyrim's launch day.

Skyrim recently received a 1.2 patch that was set to fix various issues experienced by players on all platforms. Notable problems included progressive game saves causing frame-rate issues on the PlayStation 3 version of the game and a reduction in texture resolution when installed to the hard drive on the Xbox 360. Response to the patch has been mixed, with players reporting continued problems and new issues including backward-flying dragons.

For more on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, check out GameSpot's review.