Halo Sells 3 Million, Gets New Machinima

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to the Xbox.com press release announcing "that Halo: Combat Evolved has sold more than three million copies worldwide" , by far the largest-selling software title on Microsoft's console. The press release also plugs the forthcoming PC version of Halo, which, according to Avault, will have a $30,000 team tournament devoted to it at the CPL's Winter 2003 Tournament in Dallas this December. Finally, Bungie.org has news of a great-looking new Halo trick video, called 'Winning Isn't Everything' - thanks to GameTab for providing a BitTorrent mirror for this super-skilful, stunt and exploit-filled romp.

Comments

a big deal?

[Blob Pet]

3 million?

Halo is arguably X-Box' flagship title. If you consider that Super Mario Bros. has sold over 40 million copies and Super Mario 64 has sold over 11 million copies (see here) and that Enter the Matrix has already sold 1 million copies in the brief time it's been released, this isn't that big a deal. Posted by an anonymous coward? More like posted by a desperate XBox sales force.

Re:a big deal?

[Allanon01]

To add to MBCook's argument, Enter The Matrix was release to all world markets at the same time and is playable on the PS2, XBOX, GameCube, And PC. It really can't be compared to Halo that's only available for the XBox at the moment and has only been available is some of the world's markets for about a year. Let's do this comparison when Halo is released for the PC then we will probably see Halo's sales numbers out pace most of the games mentioned.

Re:a big deal?

[Blob Pet]

SMB: 40/18 = 2.22 million copies per year. Mario64: 11/7 = 1.56 million copies per year. Halo: 3/2 = 1.5 million per year.

Your numbers suggest that sales of all 3 games are at a constant rate. Significant sales of SMB hasn't occured in a decade and Mario 64 probably hasn't sold more than a few in the past 3 or 4 years.

Halo didn't become bundles for until later, and even then you had a choice of non-bundled usually.

Before the bundling took place, remember that there weren't that many XBox games. What was the one game an Xbox purchaser was likely to buy even if it wasn't going to bundled? Halo

In the US, quality is no match for marketing tied to a big movie (unfortunatly).
Don't tell me Microsoft didn't spend millions upon millions on Halo marketing.

Re:It's sad to see such a good game languish on x-

[MBCook]

I know alot of MS bashing goes on here, but come on. For the numbers arguement, look at my post above. Yes, Halo would have been huge if it was released for PC (and that will now happen), but FAILED CONSOLE?

Why has it failed? Because it's still in the market place? Because it's outselling the GC (IIRC)? It's got some great games (Halo, JSRF, Oddworld: Munch's Odessy, Mech Assault, etc) and has some great things going for it too (only console with a hard drive in every unit, XBox Live). The system is also the most powerful of the big 3 out there, which means that it can keep having great looking and running games for years. The fact is, the X-Box is a fantastic console, and I'm VERY happy I own one. I know it's fun to bash MS for all they do, but they really did their homework when they decided to enter the video game market (unlike many other consoles (indream, phantom, that terrible thing that was integrated into DVD players.. the Nuon). Let's not forget that the X-Box is the ONLY console that could get a port of Doom 3 without a massive graphics rewrite (due to the graphics abilities).

You want a failed console? There are plenty. NeoGeo, Virtual Boy (which had fantastic games, system was just named wrong), TurboGraphics 16, Jaguar, Jaguar CD, Sega CD, Saturn, 32X, Lynx, 3DO, Nuon, indreama, GP32, and more (these are in the US, I know some of these succeded over seas).

Repeat after me: the X-Box HASN'T FAILED and it WON'T.

Time to just face up to the fact that MS hasn't fallen on their face like many people wanted them to.