At least in my area... The closest gamestop to my house is a small store and they are around 300 preorders of Halo 3 (all versions). I was at the largest gamestop in my area this weekend and they were over 500. The manager heard me ask about it and chimed it that it is "accelerating" as the game gets closer and expects to probably reach close to 1000. I realize its a stretch and is anecdotal, but assuming roughly 4000 stores in the U.S. and 500 units sold/store, that's a whole lot of preorders not counting other big box retailers... Could it be they reach 2.5 million preorders/sales the first week? The retail prices are 59.95, 69.95 and 129.95. Assuming out of 10 sales it would be 7 regular, 2 limited and 1 legendary, a weighted average retail price would be around $69 bucks. 2.5 million copies sold in the opening period would be $172.5 million right out of the gate. Didn't Microsoft state they wanted this to be the biggest opening number for an entertainment title (both video game and movie)? I think that record stands at about $150 million for Spiderman 3 in the U.S. but I could be wrong. I don't think there is any reason at this point why they won't only beat that number but smash it to bits... Ask your local eb games/gamestop what they are up to... I'm just curious. I ordered a "Legendary" and will see how it goes. If they are on Ebay for high dollars, I'll pick it up and Ebay it and then get the regular version as I don't really care about the extras. If too many Legendary Editions are made and there is no Ebay market, I'll just cancel the preorder and spend the cash on a regular edition. Just as a side note, I sold TWO Limited Bioshocks for $119 each... Some people just can't wait or don't plan ahead.
*Edit* -- I should have added that I'm in a smaller market and my numbers probably don't represent the bigger picture very well. The total population of the major city where I live plus all the surrounding smaller towns is about 1 million total. I suspect the numbers are just vulgar in places like LA, NYC, Chicago, and so on.