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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - Man, Halo 3 preorders are off the hook...

Counti on 08 September 2007

Halo 2 sold 2.4 million copies the first 24 hours. And it sold around 4 million copies the other 2-3 months after launch.

Now, there are how many xbox 360 consoles sold? 11,5 million? Thats around the half of xbox 1 consoles sold when halo 2 launched.... and i think on 25th september, there will be more than 2.4 million copies of halo 3 sold (first 24h).

I think halo 3 will stay very long in the charts, same as halo 2 even now does



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steven787 on 08 September 2007
mrstickball said:
I think how we define legs is entirely suspect on the game.

If Halo3 does move around 3 million copies the first week, how can it have long legs? I'm definately not in the camp of "everyone that wants Halo3 will buy it first week, and/or have a X360 already", but here are the facts:

Selling 3m units first week is beyond insane. If it sold 3m copies f/w, that'd be the #2 game of the year in 1 week. So 3m copies for ANY game within a 1 week timespan is ungodly.

Halo3 will not have a good multiplier due to this. At 3m units in a week, it's near impossible for ANY game to have a great multiplier.

However, having said this, what I'm thinking is this:

Halo3 will sell around 2,500,000-3,000,000 units in 7 days or less.

The week afterwards, sales will drop to around 450,000-500,000 units. This is an insane drop (around 80%), then start slowing it's decent down. Is this bad? Yes, if your talking a typical game. But Halo isn't a typical game. Selling 500,000 units during a non-holiday second week would be ungodly (at 500k, right now, H3s second week would be bigger than almost every games first week this year).

After this, it should see sales in the 100k to 500k range the rest of the year (think Gears in December numbers), then trail off slowly. Is this bad? Heck no. But we must really define what are good legs: Is it just a good multiplier (ala Wii Play), or strong sales regardless of a multiplier. IMO, I consider a game like Halo2 to keep selling 6k units a week, 143 weeks after the game has been out (and system discontinued) of far greater importance than the fact it has a 3x multiplier. Games like that show that they are true blockbusters.

Gears of War is proof at great great sales and multipliers: 9 months after release, and gangbuster sales during Christmas (1m sales in Dec in 5 weeks), that it's still doing insanely well: It's sales have gone up, not down, week over week since the price drop and such.

Put me in the "Halo3 will sell 7m+ copies in the US/NA" club. If not more. I think Halo3 might contend with every title this generation (next to SMG) for top-selling exclusive game for a console in the US.
I am a Nintendo Fan (not fanboy) and also own a PS3, but I think Halo 3 will far outsell Mario Galaxy this year.  Lifetime should be very close unless one of the two consoles outsells the other significantly (which is likely).
There is only one problem with it selling 3 million week one in NA.  That would be the closest to a 2:1 ownership ratio that I have ever thought possible from first week sales (not including a console launch).    Wii play isn't even that high, and it's almost free and it was a launch game in JPN


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starcraft on 08 September 2007

I think it will be huge, but i think Microsoft is overestimating it



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selnor on 08 September 2007

I dont think Microsoft are over estimating at all. Halo franchise is the Star Wars of the videogame world. Its a cult phenomenon. like Star Wars there will always be people who dnt like it.



starcraft on 08 September 2007

OH its big, but Star Wars big? Not even close. But i genuinely believe Halo 3 will be good enough to sell itself to a bigger number of people (eventually) than Halo 2. I just dont think it will shift consoles the same way. That said, its potential is not to be underestimated. It looks like a graphical and audio masterpiece and the gameplay is similar to 2 (which is really incredibly good by popular account) only with a few pleasant additions such as the bubble-shield which the 360's power makes possible



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koffieboon on 08 September 2007

Well, considering there will be around 6.5M 360 owners in the US when the game is released I can't really see it sell more than 1.5M copies to unique owners in the first week. However, I don't know if there could be a large group of people who buy more than 1 copy (considering there are 3 different versions) or people buying the legendary version with the intention to sell it with a profit on eBay. Add those 2 groups in and maybe it could get to 2M first week. I don't see the game breaking Halo 2 numbers simply because the userbase is so much smaller and the holiday season hasn't started yet . Maybe eventually Halo 3 could outsell Halo 2, but not in opening numbers. Personally I will probably go for a 1.6-1.8M opening week in the prediction league.



Lost tears of Kain on 08 September 2007
koffieboon said:
Well, considering there will be around 6.5M 360 owners in the US when the game is released I can't really see it sell more than 1.5M copies to unique owners in the first week. However, I don't know if there could be a large group of people who buy more than 1 copy (considering there are 3 different versions) or people buying the legendary version with the intention to sell it with a profit on eBay. Add those 2 groups in and maybe it could get to 2M first week. I don't see the game breaking Halo 2 numbers simply because the userbase is so much smaller and the holiday season hasn't started yet . Maybe eventually Halo 3 could outsell Halo 2, but not in opening numbers. Personally I will probably go for a 1.6-1.8M opening week in the prediction league.

im guessing in the 2-3 million range, based on the fact that there is clearly over a million preorders so far, we can expect to have 1.5 before launch so 500k is not much at all, specially for halo



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mrstickball on 08 September 2007

Koffie -

To be fair though, comparing opening weeks, Madden 2008 and 2007 launched with 750,000 and 850,000 units respectively. Isn't Halo3 quite a bit bigger than those 2? Most every sales report I've seen for Madden sales vs. Halo3 preorders has put Halo 3 at a 3:1 upto a 5:1 advantage against M08 sales.

Halo2 sold to 20% of the userbase the first day on the Xbox (11.5m owners). The X360, atleast according to VGC will have over 7m users at that time. I would greatly assume that Halo3 will sell to a bigger % than that, at that time.

Not only that, but if you look at Gears of War last year, it sold 606,000 copies, which was 17.9% of the entire X360 userbase at that time.

If the X360 was at 7,250,000 units by then, even if it did GOW numbers, it'd be at 1,297,000 units. However, I tend to think Halo 3 *might* (emphasis on sarcasm) be more hyped than Gears was.

Next game you could compare, in terms of percentage, would be Madden 2007. It sold to 23.9% of the userbase (625k to 2,613k users). Using those numbers, H3 would sell to 1,732,000 people.

IMO, it should sell between M07's 23.9% of the install base, upto 35 or even 40%. It really depends on the whole "everyone that wants Halo3 already has a X360". If that were true, Halo3 could sell 6.5m copies first week :-p



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eab on 08 September 2007

Halo will move consoles. I know I'm not exactly a "credible source" but I assure you out of my dozen or so close friends I know for a fact that 2 of them are waiting for Halo to buy a 360. One of them actually just started a temporary 2nd job to bring in the necessary funds.



koffieboon on 08 September 2007
mrstickball said:
Koffie -

To be fair though, comparing opening weeks, Madden 2008 and 2007 launched with 750,000 and 850,000 units respectively. Isn't Halo3 quite a bit bigger than those 2? Most every sales report I've seen for Madden sales vs. Halo3 preorders has put Halo 3 at a 3:1 upto a 5:1 advantage against M08 sales.

Halo2 sold to 20% of the userbase the first day on the Xbox (11.5m owners). The X360, atleast according to VGC will have over 7m users at that time. I would greatly assume that Halo3 will sell to a bigger % than that, at that time.

Not only that, but if you look at Gears of War last year, it sold 606,000 copies, which was 17.9% of the entire X360 userbase at that time.

If the X360 was at 7,250,000 units by then, even if it did GOW numbers, it'd be at 1,297,000 units. However, I tend to think Halo 3 *might* (emphasis on sarcasm) be more hyped than Gears was.

Next game you could compare, in terms of percentage, would be Madden 2007. It sold to 23.9% of the userbase (625k to 2,613k users). Using those numbers, H3 would sell to 1,732,000 people.

IMO, it should sell between M07's 23.9% of the install base, upto 35 or even 40%. It really depends on the whole "everyone that wants Halo3 already has a X360". If that were true, Halo3 could sell 6.5m copies first week :-p

Yes Halo 3 is bigger than Madden, that is why I predict sales of twice as high. Also it is bigger than Gears of War, but the installed base is quite a bit larger as well. And the larger the userbase the less likely it is to reach 20-30% attachment rate within the first week. So if it gets the same attachment rate as Gears of War after 1 week I think Halo 3 did outperform Gears of War. (Look at Madden 08 having considerably lower attachment rates compared to 07 because of the installed base.)

Btw, my prediction would mean a 22-24% attachment rate, that is still very good.

"It really depends on the whole "everyone that wants Halo3 already has a X360". If that were true, Halo3 could sell 6.5m copies first week :-p"

That statement is completely false. The only conclusion possible from "everybody that wants Halo3 already has a 360" is that Halo 3 will never sell more than the current installed base.