GoW: Clogging The Tubes?

Gears of War is reported to have increased sales of Xbox Live Gold Memberships by roughly 50% and increased XBL traffic...

The hype of Gears of War was definitely over the top and in many of our opinions the game was "good" but not worth that much hype... or was it?

Not only did it take off on Xbox live and overtake Halo 2 as most played game but it drew a huge number of new gamers out of the woodwork. These "new gamers" probably owned an Xbox 360 already but didn't own a gold membership.

Microsoft paid up front for the hype machine but it seems to be working out in their favor ten fold. New console sales, new XBL subscribers, and heavy game sales. The network utilization on XBL has also increased by 80 percent.

Unfortunately, other games were left in the dust because of the shadow of this hype machine. For instance, Call of Duty 3, Tony Hawk Project 8 and Viva Piñata also arrived at a similar launch date - no love for them.

It might have been wise to slip the dates of these other hot titles by three weeks or so when people started beating Gears of War and realizing the multiplayer networking wasn't all that hot.

Apparently Senator Ted Stevens didn't know how popular Gears of War would be when he decided to cite a few products that "clog up" the "internet tubes." Perhaps the makers of Gears of War knew this as one of their achievements "A Series of Tubes" rings true in this case.

source: gamespot.com