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.
It appears that Halo 3 has now officially outranked both Gears of War - (and, thus) - every other game in terms of hours played on Xbox Live. This knocks Gears of War from its #1 position held since its release last year.
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.
@Laoldar, well we do know that there were at least 1.7 million pre-orders in the US. I think the 2.48 million day one is US only. Didn't the game come out 1 day later in Europe?
@Just_Ben, I'm not about to say their numbers are too high or too low, but they are in my opinion valid analysis.
Let's play with the numbers a bit. If all copies were Legendary, then $170 million worth is 1.3 million copies. All Limited, 2.43 million. All Standard, 2.83 million. Obviously none of these are correct, it's a mix of all three, but only GameDaily is making a guess at ratios. Now remember, that $170 million in sales is a Microsoft number, so take that with any salt you'd reserve for those sort of numbers. Regardless, I think this is useful enough information for making our own prediction.
Based on Microsoft's revenue report, a retail industry contact, and some math, GameDaily has estimated roughly 2.48 million copies of Halo 3 sold its first day.
@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.
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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 do understand we are talking lifetime sales.