24/7 Wall St.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) has generated over $300 million in sales from Halo 3 titles in the first week alone, with $59.95 of that being from me.  There were more than 1.7 million copies pre-ordered, which broke its own record-breaking release of Halo 2 sales and beat the record sales set for Spider-Man 3 and of Harry Potter movies.  Video games surpassed movies in annual sales in recent years.  If you’ve ever played ANY of the Halo games you’ll know why. 

It seems that there are somewhere in the vicinity of 12 million or more Xbox 360 units on the marketplace.  When you include the Xbox 360 console sales for the upcoming holiday season and say that all titles will be the cheap $59.95 version you can see where this can quite easily generate $500 million in sales with less than 10 million copies sold.  There are always lagging sales and these Halo 3 sales will continue.  We haven’t even gotten the release for Halo 3 on PC yet, although several game store managers are not even sure if it will come for PC’s.  We think it will by late 2008, but that’s speculation.  The question isn’t IF Halo 3 hits $500 million.  It’s just how quick it happens that is a question.

If you would like to read the full official story from Microsoft you can see it on the site here.
24/7 Wall St.’s Views on Halo 3:

• First Day Disappointment? No way!
• The investor’s look into Halo 3;
• GameStop (NYSE:GME) sure went a bit far;
• Halo 3 sucks away other video game dollars;
• Halo 4 Already Coming…sort of, beyond the upcoming Halo Wars we mean!
• Take-Two’s (NASDAQ:TTWO) Grand Theft Auto delays help other game companies.

Jon C. Ogg
October 4, 2007