Xbox Game Studios games have been played for 1.66 billion hours so far in 2020

Xbox Game Studios titles have been played for 1.66 billion hours this year, further proving that 2020 has been a great year for staying inside and playing video games.

Xbox marketing boss Aaron Greenberg shared the dizzying figure in a rundown of impressive stats on the Xbox Wire blog. That figure of 1.66 billion hours played is only year-to-date, and Greenberg confirmed that it's a record for the company.

The average worldwide life expectancy for humans is 71 years (according to a 2015 study by the UN), which means those 1.66 billion hours of playtime equal 2669 average lifetimes for theoretical people who only ever play first-party Xbox games - never stopping to eat, sleep, or even try Mario Kart. Technically the math works out to 2668.98, so the last person would get to enjoy a few months of retirement after their 70 years of gaming service.

Fun with arithmetic aside, these play hours figures are the kind of metric that you should expect to hear a lot more of from Xbox in the future. Now that Xbox Game Pass has become a cornerstone of Microsoft's gaming business model, it's becoming less about the number of games or consoles sold, and more about how much the company can engage its subscribers.

With Xbox Series X and an impressive slate of upcoming Xbox Series X games on the way, I'd expect those numbers are only going to keep climbing in the years ahead.

See what you'll be able to play as soon as the next generation arrives with our guide to Xbox Series X launch games.