Ok so a few people here believe that Halo Reach stands absoloutely no chance to outsell Halo 3, or at least a difficult task.
Firstly I have to talk about this silly debate about Halo Wars and ODST putting players off Reach. Consumers arn't stupid. This is why Halo Wars only sold 600k first week, pales in comparison to the 3.8 million Halo 3 put up doesn't it?. So apparantly a "ton" of people bought Halo Wars unaware it was an RTS (because they're stupid) and decided that they were done with the Halo franchise, that it was stagnating, then Halo 3 ODST (CLEARLY) not a sequel of any kind, sells 2.2 mill first week. I was one of the few naive people that thought ODST could match Halo 3 numbers, but it was never going to happen. Consumers knew this was overpriced and an expansion like game, probably choosing to pick the game up used for the campaign and non matchmaking firefight.
Halo Wars and ODST have not put anyone off the Halo franchise. I firmly believe there are only a handful of people that have played Halo 3 and either/both Halo Wars and ODST, that feel the series is stagnating.
Furthermore Reach doesn't need to have a "4" in front of it to sell, the buying public arnt given enough credit, they're not mindless zombies that can't read the back of a game. Halo Wars was an RTS, and ODST was, like I said, clearly an expansion type game.
Marketing wise, ODST and Wars didn't get anywhere near what Halo 3 did, but you can bet your bottom dollar Reach will. They're either going to match or try and outdo what Halo 3 did.
My next point goes in favour of and against Halo Reach selling more.
Call of Duty 4 was a fantastic game, didn't have a huge first week, but had massive legs. But most importantly, it had loyal fans/players, this in term with the massive marketing MW2 recieved, is why it did massive first week numbers and has already outsold MW1.
Gears of War on the other hand, was similar to MW1, not a massive opening, but fantastic legs. Even though Gears 2 had a much better opening, it's legs havn't been nearly as good as the first, meaning lifetime sales are going to be the same more or less.
Now it's up to you which game Halo Reach will take after, but Halo is far far more popular than Gears. Both Gears 2 and MW2 has much better opens than their previous game, due to all the "legs" buyers purchasing it first day. So it shouldn't be too hard too imagin it will do 3.8+ million first week. In fact ... it's very difficult to think less than 10% of the 360 userbase is going to buy Reach, considering a massive 33% bought Halo 3 first week, and it hasn't dipped below a 25% attach rate since.
Now I'm not saying Reach will get a 30%, but COD4 with a rough 22% attach rate, MW2 managed 15% attach rate first week.
Lastly, whatever people say Halo > MW in terms of Xbox players. MW2 is likely to outsell Halo 3 soon (ish) 1 million lead for Halo 3, MW2 outselling it at 60k a week atm, would take 5 months at least, but up until this point, Halo 3 has had better legs than MW1, and is generally considered the definitive shooter on the 360. Come Halo Reach, expect a bigger opening week than MW2, and better legs.
