Yes. But the Reach counter is much more broken. There is a disparity of an additional 2,000 players that don't exist in Halo: Reach. Jeremiah failed to prove this wrong when he said that "Reach takes into account that particular population of Halo, the Custom-Gamers."
To prove his statement wrong, a user gained the audacity to delve into the matter. He said that during every minute of the day, he would count the amount of players in real time via the game itself, then go to the website at the same time. It always concluded the same way: Game Counter Population - Website Counter Population= 2,000. 2,000 players that don't exist in Halo: Reach.
This was before Bungie augmented the new counter to a 24 hour period, but they never changed the counter in Halo 3 back to a 24 hour population. Bungie these days, so pathetic to impress fools who are swayed by population.