Gears of War 2 has sold over two million copies worldwide in its launch weekend, says Microsoft. Jolly well done, says us.

But Microsoft isn’t content to brag about that staggering statistic alone - particularly when there are competitors to belittle. Thus we’re treated to additional factoids, such as the midnight openings of more than 20,000 stores in 20 countries last Friday, and tales of mad fanboys travelling huge distances in order to pick up the very first copy of the game. Additionally over 1.5 million highly satisfied customers logged into Gears 2 on Xbox LIVE over the weekend, logging 15 million hours of gameplay, setting a new record for concurrent LIVE players and unlocking 19 million Achievements into the bargain. Blimey.

You can add a couple UK stats to that too - Gears of War 2 has become the third biggest seller on Xbox 360, beaten only by Grand Theft Auto IV and Halo 3 (it’s way better than both, if you ask us) and it is now the eighth biggest selling game in its first weekend overall.

Ordinarily we’d have to say that nobody likes a show-off, but, heck, we just have to make an exception on this occasion…