Apparently gamers are really excited by this tiny little indie project called Resident Evil 5. Microsoft has announced that the RE5 demo has been downloaded 1.8 million times through Xbox Live thus far.

In the first three days since the demo became available in North America and Europe on January 26th, it racked up 1.3 million downloads. That would mean the demo's only been downloaded 500,000 times over in Japan since it was released on December 5th. That's more of an indication of how few Xbox 360 owners there are in Japan than an indication of Japanese gamers' enthusiasm for RE5, though; the same press release from Microsoft notes that 53% of Japanese Xbox Live Gold subscribers have acquired the demo.

The release points out that RE5's demo is "among the top Demo launches on the service." It's not completely clear who the top dog is in that category. Last summer, Microsoft claimed that the Too Human demo was downloaded more than any other action demo when it racked up 900,000 downloads in two weeks. Assuming Too Human was still the most downloaded game, you can imagine why Microsoft wouldn't be bragging about Resident Evil 5 beating it.