You might say that EA have a lot to be happy about. In fact, they have about five hundred million things to be happy about, with the announcement that this week saw them hit that precise milestone in online matches of the 09 series of the EA Sports range, which launched in June last year.

Titles in the series include FIFA 09, Madden NFL 09 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09, all of which have proved more than a little popular, even amongst their countless prior incarnations, and the smörgåsbord of boggling numbers related to the series continues with a handful of other interesting little factoids.

Six titles in the EA Sports range can boast of more than half a million registered users, and in particular, FIFA 09 and Madden NFL 09 each count over 2.4 million players. While these numbers and the five hundred million mark are impressive, they're not that meaningful as stand-alone figures. Happily, EA have some comparative statistics that make the popularity trends of their franchises rather more clear: it seems that online matches are up almost 175% over last year's numbers, with daily matches totaling an average of 2.2 million. Let's just hope the increase in virtual sport's popularity doesn't involve a decrease in actual physical activity, especially when you consider that over 35 years of online sports play are tallied up every single day on EA's servers.


NHL 09 pleased critics, but NBA Live 09 did not.
Upcoming titles from the EA Sports range include EA Sports Grand Slam Tennis, featuring John McEnroe, and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10, both of which will release for Wii and support the new MotionPlus accessory.