Halo 3 was clearly a catalyst in driving holiday sales for Microsoft's console, as Bungie's epic shooter has now surpassed 8.1 million copies sold around the globe. It was only last month that corporate vp Jeff Bell told us that Halo 3 had sold over five million globally. So in the span of a month, the game pushed another three million units.
@Jesse2050, I think the replay camera really gives Halo 3 the winning advantage. I have seen some sick videos of triple head shots, dying from your own granade, and the mario parody (I know it wasnt online, but it was still something that made the reply cam great).
Halo is one of the best multiplayer games since Goldeneye. Sure Halo the game and even Halo the multiplayer isnt as detailed and perfect as COD 4. But COD 4 is not fun in the same way Halo is. COD 4 is great, but when I think back of all my gaming parties, COD 4 will not be a top memory. Halo parties, Goldeneye weekends, and Mario Kart mania is what sticks in my head. And THAT is why Halo will always win in multiplayer over the realistic games.
And, just a correction in your statement. The Halo franchise is not what made the Xbox. No single game can make a system. It was a highlight game, but it was all the Xbox features, including Live, that made that system. Halo was a great advantage to have, but even with out it, the Xbox would have survived, and we would still have the Xbox 360.
Xbox 360 best-seller Halo 3 not only received rave reviews from the critics, but it is also likely to pick up gasps from industry outsiders after it was revealed that the game cost an estimated £15 million ($30 million) to develop, with several more millions spent on marketing.
It's rare stuff like this that gives me hope that not quite everybody is grading games based on multiplayer which like Yahtzee I don't care at all about.
What other game has such a fully-featured replay mode? What other game comes with such a variety of maps and game styles? What other game gives you the chance to be teabagged by a pre-pubescent boy with a potty mouth? Hang on, that's not right. All joking aside, the voting results this year indicated what we all knew: nothing's in the same class as Halo.
@Laoldar, this game is definitely exhibiting strong initial sales--many Xbox 360 owners got the console in anticipation of the game, so they were likely to get the game within the first 2 months of release. I do there probably are strong long-tail sales from existing Xbox 360 owners, but I believe new Xbox 360 owners will continue to pick up the title.
I am not surprised that Halo 3 is skewed toward US purchases and I think the current forecast considers this.
Consider that of that 4.1 million in 3 months, 3.3 million was just from the first month. This game is incredibly frontloaded in sales. Also, this shows that the Halo brand is fairly weak worldwide. 82% of the worldwide sales of Halo 3 come from the US alone.
@feelmyring, This article says great things for both the Halo 3 stock and the Xbox 360 lifetime stock. The most interesting thing, I thought, was that Halo 3 has sold almost half of what we're predicting worldwide lifetime, in the US in about 3 months.
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