Great infor, thanks! Can't remember where I saw the 3.5, but VCG has it right at 3.5. That is a phenomenal installed base penetration rate, but is it including all the folks who waited for Halo 3 to buy a 360? Anyways, I appreciate you taking the time to impart your wisdom to a NOOB, thanks again!
NPD is not conservative, NPD counts. And who is predicting such a high number? VGC has it at approx 2.9 million for U.S. analyst say all about 3 Million. And those numbers are phenomenal. There are approx 6.7 Million 360 in Amercia. Thats 3.5 Million would be a insane high attach rate of over 50%, in two weeks. Thats why some think those numbers are to high. I personally think 2.7-2.9 Million is the range it will end up. The October future however is so way overrated on so many levels, it just hurts that people are still buying it.
Am I missing something?? All signs seem to point to Sept. Unit Sales Between 3 and 3.5 Million, yet the future keeps declining and even on the day of NPD's September reporting isn't rising above the 300 Mark. Is NPD much more conservative than all of the analysts and other pundits?
So the opening data is in...multiple opening day records for ANY entertainment product broken...play time overwhelms every other game across the board...pace of sales according to various sources from gamasutra, gamebiz daily, analysts and even the Inquirer ( which rarely comments on Games) is set to outpace not just the Halos before it but most every AAA title release before it. Reviews positive across the board. Christmas shopping begins in earnest and with no new hardware release this winter (even in the PC realm...well Barcelona launch..meh) it will be all about the software, the games.
And consider that sales usually grow or remain steady during the holiday season...so the launch was also perfect timed to grab the shoppers in November and December.
SO why in all that is is supposedly data based and predictive...is the share price of HALO 3 FALLING?!?!?
The futures are all going up. The volume of trading remains steady. Yet the share price is falling.
Is this just a simple case of the market losing touch with reality? Something sinister? Or is the market really in tune with reality and nothing sinister going on? Just alot of people selling to profit over the gain of 22nd?
Wait, didn't we have data come out that justifies gains in price from the 25th and on?
However recently, I have seen the same bewildering phenomenon where the data justifies an increase and the price plummets. Or data justifies a decrease..and the shares increase.
I would argue that the share market has lost touch with reality and is becoming more and more useless as a predictive indicator and is moving to its own internal masturbatory beat. I would argue that this has been known by the developers and is behind some of the reason to the shift in focus to the Futures where the short duration and short term scope limits the ability of the market to meander in its own surreal way.
Its inevitable I guess, as less and less people look at data and more speculative elements come in.
I finally beat the single player campaign. It was a lot of fun, with the intensity of Halo 2, but slightly longer. I also thought that the levels were more dynamic than previous games--no more wandering around in identical looking rooms in spaceship mazes. The addition of a Flood setting also makes the game a bit creepy.
The stuff with Cortana and the Gravemind appearing in your screen screaming at you seemed a bit over the top and out of place though. Seemed more for a horror game like FEAR than Halo. Anyone feel the same way?
The new equipment that you can drop like bubble shields and deployable cover also add a whole different dynamic to the FPS.
@welshbloke, You guys make valid points. The only thing that appears different between the problems with Halo 3 and previous big releases is the Disc Read Errors. I don't remember any other release causing Disc Read Errors, and it sounds like this problem is large among the total Halo 3 userbase.
With this game having higher day one sales than any other 360 game it is probably not suprising to see such complaints.
The RROD is to be expected probably because they are taxing the console more than they had recently and with the RROD heat stress related this would be expected.
Obviously if this happens to you and you have been waiting for a long time for the game it could be shall we say a little annoying.
Not terribly shocking. Every large 360 release (Oblivion, Gears, etc) seems to cause a small number of systems to lock up. Unfortunately, with such a large release the problem will appear to be worse.
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Great infor, thanks! Can't remember where I saw the 3.5, but VCG has it right at 3.5. That is a phenomenal installed base penetration rate, but is it including all the folks who waited for Halo 3 to buy a 360?
Anyways, I appreciate you taking the time to impart your wisdom to a NOOB, thanks again!