Xbox Live Top 20: The power of a deal

Major Nelson has released the usual breakdown of Xbox Live activity for last week, February 8-15. On the retail side of things, Modern Warfare 2 still dominates with Halo 3 maintaining second. The Aliens vs Predator demo takes third place, knocking the Battlefield: Bad Company 2 to fifth while Call of Duty: World at War maintains its fourth place position. So, in other words, not very exciting.

The Xbox Live Arcade activity, however, is much more interesting. One look at the list and it's clear how much power the Deal of the Week can have on sales. In the next most recent activity listing (January 25 - February 1), Marvel vs Capcom rested in the number ten slot while TMNT: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled wasn't even in the top 20. Last week, thanks to both games being heavily discounted, Marvel vs Capcom jumped to number two while Turtles in Time Re-Shelled shot directly to number one. Invincible Tiger: The Legend of Han Tao, discounted as well, also broke back into the top twenty, landing in the thirteenth slot.

Whether the turtles will keep the top spot remains to be seen. With Battlefield 1943 knocked down to $10 this week, we're guessing they might be headed back into the sewer.