Xboxist

Gears of War spikes Xbox Live traffic

Traffic on Xbox Live looks to have spiked since the recent release of Gears of War, according to a report from Sandvine, an Internet research company. The company said in a press release that "through the use of its intelligent broadband network solution, Sandvine observed an 80% increase in the number of Xbox Live users across a sampling of North American-based broadband service providers' networks during the first week following the release of six new Xbox games. On November 7, 2006, Microsoft released six new games for Xbox, including the highly anticipated release of Gears of War, which sold 1-million copies in the first two weeks."

Sandvine added the spike in Xbox Live traffic following the launch of a highly anticipated game is reminiscent of Halo 2's release in 2004, which helped to put Xbox Live on the map.