The beta period for the multiplayer component of Gears of War: Ultimate Edition came to a close yesterday, and its developers at The Coalition have released an infographic detailing exactly how much carnage players caused over the eight-day test. Gears of War fans will be happy to hear that plenty of action went down during the special event.

Apparently, a group of 786,415 players managed to complete over a million matches during the course of the beta. A whopping 41.2 million kills were recorded, 1.6 million of those coming from the series’ iconic chainsaw bayonet and 1.7 million occurring as the result of a curb stomp.

The original Gears of War launched in 2006, providing a new benchmark for graphical achievement on consoles thanks to its incredibly detailed environments and cutting-edge effects. Its multiplayer modes also received a large amount of praise from critics and players alike.

Offering something altogether slower paced and more tactical than the multiplayer of the hugely popular Halo series, Gears of War soon found its niche on Xbox Live. Gridlock soon emerged as the game’s definitive map, and as such was prominently featured in later entries as well as being a focus in the beta.

However, the two mainline sequels released for the Xbox 360 both made tweaks to the formula of the game’s multiplayer component. Some fans were in favour of these changes, but many saw them as a watering down of the gameplay that they had enjoyed in the original Gears.

As a result, the decision of how faithful to make the Ultimate Edition has been contentious. Popular opinion seems to be to bring it as close as possible to the game that launched in 2006, but there’s an obvious logic to be found in calls to utilize some of the subtle difference that were introduced in its sequels.

The real question is whether we’ll see those changes influence multiplayer in Gears 4, which was officially announced at E3 earlier this month. Fans had long speculated that a new instalment was on its way, but confirmation that it would hit in 2016 suggests that development has been ongoing for some time.

The Coalition has a an excellent opportunity to resteer the Gears franchise for a new generation between the Ultimate Edition and its fourth mainline game. The beta statistics released by the studio demonstrate that there’s still an audience hungry for this style of multiplayer — hopefully both final products can satisfy that crowd.

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition is scheduled to released worldwide for Xbox One on August 25, 2015, with a PC release following at a later date. Gears of War 4 will release in late 2016.