What many posters don't seem to realize is that hardware sales just don't vary that much on a week to week basis. Software numbers are very elastic, rising and falling depending on which new games come out - but not so much for hardware. Most systems tend to settle around a certain average and then fluctuate +/- 10% for long periods of time. Look at the Wii, which has been hanging around 90k per week in the American market for ages now.
As HappySquirrel said above, Halo has been influencing 360 sales for the past month at least, and possibly longer than that. A humongous hardware spike on one single week is an unrealistic expectation; that's not the way the market works. Fortunately for Microsoft, the next couple of weeks should also see higher than usual 360 sales as Halo fever slowly cools down. The game definitely DID move systems, just not in a single weekly spike.
On another note, it's interesting to see how Halo launch week is going to give the 360 a narrow worldwide sales victory over the Wii, probably on the order of about 10-15k overall. There's no doubt that the Wii will be back to leading in worldwide weekly sales next week, although very likely not in America. Just goes to show how unrealistic those assertions that Halo would propel the 360 back into the overall worldwide lead really were...
End of 2008 totals: Wii 42m, 360 24m, PS3 18.5m (made Jan. 4, 2008)
