Xbox Live celebrates 10th anniversary, highest usage ever

Xbox Live is 10 years old today, and the service is celebrating with the requisite free stuff. Not only has Live reached a chronological milestone, it also registered its most user-hours ever in a single week from November 6 to November 13. Bet you can't guess why?

That's right, Netflix! Oh, also Halo 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2--all told, Xbox Live sucked up 442 million person-hours in that period, according to Marc Whitten, corporate vice president of Xbox Live.

Meanwhile, Xbox Live's Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb announced several deals in celebration: Kinect-enabled castle-smasher Wreckateer is available for free, and members can enjoy 50 percent discounts on Bastion, Castle Crashers, Fruit Ninja Kinect, and others games. Of course, it wouldn't be an Xbox Live promotion if there wasn't some limited time avatar apparel up for grabs.

Here's to another 10 years of good times with friends and foul-mouthed pre-teens!

Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.