Halo 3: THE franchise
We all remember this headline from a few years back:
‘Halo 2′ sales top ‘Grand Theft Auto’
24 hour sales of Xbox title exceed what GTA earned in its first six days.
NEW YORK (CNN/Money ) – “Halo 2″ has claimed early bragging rights in the 2004 video game battle.
In its first 24 hours of retail availability, the flagship title for Microsoft’s Xbox gaming system sold approximately 340,000 copies more than “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” did in its first six days on shelves.
Microsoft announced late Wednesday that retailers sold 2.4 million copies of “Halo 2″ on Tuesday, racking up sales of $125 million — 25 percent higher than what Peter Moore, vice president of Microsoft’s games division, predicted at a Harris Nesbitt investment conference Tuesday.
The alleged video game of the year has been released about 8 hours ago now (midnight last night) and the industry is awaiting the numbers. Imagine selling 2.4M units in one day racking up sales of $125M. That’s incredible. Spiderman-3 sold $151M in the first weekend (box office#) and some are predicting that Halo 3 could beat that number…
Microsoft remains coy about sales predictions, but many are calling this the biggest game launch ever. Outside New York City, a reported 10,000 U.S. stores held “midnight madness” sales, and special launch events took place in Los Angeles, Seattle and Miami. In London, authorities fearing mob scenes banned “midnight madness” events, according to The New York Times.
One thing that I find extremely interesting about the Halo franchise is that women play it. Of course women play video games but you do not tend to find them in action/first person shooter games. When talking with friends and even visiting colleagues in ad agencies, women certainly know about Halo and have been exposed to the game.
There is more to Halo than just the game. There is an entire ecosystem around the game. As you can see above, approximately 10,000 stores held midnight madness parties. Not many games can substantiate that. When EA released its lastest iteration of it’s top football game (Madden), it called it a Madden Holiday. Remember seeing all the television commercials around that?
Just like we eagerly awaited Aquaman’s opening night numbers in Entourage, we await the figues over the next 18 hours for Halo 3. Should be interesting. Spidey, watch out.
Here is a good analysis of Halo 3 that just came out