Even though Halo: Reach wasn’t even out for a full week as of this past Sunday, our latest and greatest game still racked up some mighty impressive numbers. While we’re not privy to the methodologies and data used to compile the Xbox LIVE Activity reports published to Major Nelson’s blog this morning, we do know that last week’s numbers were well off the mark due to what’s now being called a “manual reporting error.”

Fortunately for us, our online team tracks every single aspect of Halo: Reach right down to shots fired, and our own internal data tells a very different story. To help put launch week into a little more perspective, we’ve prepared a handful of stats to compare and contrast Halo: Reach against our stalwart online juggernaut, Halo 3.

• On Tuesday, 09/14/2010 at approximately 1:30 pm PST, just a few hours after launch, Halo: Reach’s online unique user count had already completely eclipsed Halo 3’s total tally for the entirety of the week (09/13 through 09/20).
• To account for the same number of online players found in Halo: Reach during that same window (just six days), we had to run the numbers for Halo 3 going all the way back to 8/6/2010, encompassing a full 45 days of Halo 3 play!
• Ultimately, Halo: Reach’s online population for the first week dwarfed Halo 3’s by comparison, snagging four times the number of total unique users and decimating Halo 3’s all time high of concurrent users by more than 65%.

And here are some more Halo: Reach specific numbers from week-one that are just all kinds of kick ass in their own right:

• 70 Million+ Games have been played
• 235 Million+ Player-Games have been played
• 2 Million+ Files have been uploaded to File Shares
• 5,901 man-years have been spent in online Reach games (sorry, Corporate America!)
• 20 Million Daily challenges have been completed
• 709,840 Weekly challenges have been completed
• 165 Billion Credits have been earned

To say we’re grateful for your continued support would be an understatement. Our sources tell us that we’ve been the number one title on Xbox LIVE for the last seven days. You complete us.

Thanks a million for playing Halo: Reach. (Halo 3, too!). We’ll see you online.