How to Waste a Life

The following post might make you very, very sad. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Microsoft just released a few statistics about their Xbox Live service. They are terrifying.

From a Microsoft Press Release:

"Following the launch of the Xbox LIVE online gaming network in November 2002, gamers have spent over 2.3 billion hours on the network playing games online with their friends around the world. This is equal to 95 million days of gaming or over 260,000 years. With our top title, Halo 2, which is being played on both the Xbox and Xbox 360, gamers have spent over 710 million hours playing online with over a half a billion games played."

...take some time to process that.

260,000 years.

Don't get me wrong, I love me some video games. I don't look at them as a waste of time. But if we, the collective gaming community, were to put 260,000 years into more fruitful projects, like discovering a cure for AIDS, we probably would have by now. Twice.

And I don't even want to know how many hundreds of thousands of centuries people have spent playing WoW.