Microsoft Sells A Couple Of Copies Of Halo 3
So, turns out this Halo 3 thing can move some units. Who knew?
Yeah, Halo 3 sales have been nice, as expected (and possible better than expected), so here’s what we know:
Estimates are that Halo 3 sold 2.48 million units on its first day, totalling $170 million in money earned. It is believed that translates to 1.6 million copies of the $60 standard edition, 694,000 copies of the $70 Limited Edition and 187,000 copies of the $130 Legendary Edition. Expect going forward, most sales to be of the cheaper edition, as the people apt to drop extra money on this game got theirs on day one.
Go on eBay if you want to buy the Legendary Edition’s bonus materials without the game.
Total sales for the first week were $300 million, giving Halo 3 the most profitable first day in the history of all media releases, as well as the most profitable first week. Sales of the Xbox 360 console itself doubled the week the game was released (to about 277,000), a nice jump that helps Micrososft further extend its lead on Sony.
In Australia, 70,000 copies of the game were sold in the first week, 50,000 sold on launch day.
Halo 3 was actually number one in Japan its first week, selling a respectable 58,672 copies in that country, better than any other game. Looks like the few people who actually bought the console in that country knew it was worth picking up the big game as well. Microsoft also sold a lot of new 360s, about 11,000.
After that big first week, sales dropped off dramatically, though that’s almost to be expected. Microsoft sold 1,547 consoles, and the game itself completely dissapeared off the sales charts in its second week.
Some other stuff:
Apparently, you get to unlock different armor for your character through certain in-game achievements, decking out your character however you’d like, if you unlock the cool stuff. This website has an armor generator you can use to see all the combinations, like this one:
To get everything you see there, you’d have to earn 1000 Gamerscore in Halo 3, unlock the “Mongoose Mowdown” Achievement for splatter an enemy with a Mongoose in a ranked free for all playlist, complete The Ark level on Legendary and collect 5 gold skulls.
Finally, in big news, Microsoft announced it was splitting off Bungie, the developers of all the Halo games, as an independant company. Microsoft was setting Bungie free, despite its success, because if it kept Bungie and made them make Halo games into eternity, the most talented employees would have just left, so Microsoft unleashed them instead.
Microsoft owns Halo, Bungie gets to make whatever games it chooses. Bungie will partner with Microsoft (and Microsoft still owns an equity stake), so you can be assured that almost anything they make will be on the Xbox 360, though not necessarily exclusively.
