The cogs did their part, as 1.29 million fans enlisted in the recent Gears of War 3 multiplayer beta and pre-ordered the game in hordes. In all, Epic gathered 249 years worth of match-time data from players spanning 145 countries during the four-week public testing phase, which wrapped up this past Sunday. And it was all up and running, for the first time, on dedicated servers. (Oorah!)

While neither Microsoft nor Epic specified how many beta testers got in early through their "Epic Edition" copies of Bulletstorm, the two were quite pleased to announce that Gears of War 3 has surpassed one million pre-orders (the other ticket into the beta) -- and we're still four months away from the game's September 20 launch. That's got to be some kind of record, right?

Uh-huh. Gears 3 now holds the distinguished honor of being "the fastest pre-ordered Xbox exclusive title to reach this milestone in the history of the platform." (*Golf clap*)

Pore over some more beta stats after the break.