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Sales - Understanding Halo - View Post

Michael-5 said:

Well Halo: Reach is around the corner, and there is a lot of speculation to how well the game will sell. The game currently has just a little more Pre-orders the Modern Warfare 2, and about 1.5 times the Pre-orders of Halo 3, which to my knowledge had 1.1 million Pre-orders (Please correct me if I'm wrong). So if Reach sells in a similar fashion to Halo 3, it could potentially outsell Halo 3 by 73%. I doubt the game will sell 19 million copies (I'm guessing 14.5 million personally), but to be fair I thought it would be smart to compare pre-orders and weekly sales to past core games in the franchise. This way, once week one, two, three, etc figures come in, we can compare it's sales and make more accurate estimates on total game sales. So here we go.

Note -  Halo: Combat Evolved is excluded from the comparison because VGChartz does not have weekly sales data for the game. The game did go on and sell 6.43 million as a Launch title for the X-Box. This gives it a Software-Hardware ratio of 0.261, meaning that 26.1% of X-Box owners own a copy of Halo: Combat Evolved, which was a launch title for the 360.

Note - Halo 3, and ODST were released in September, so the 10 week data does not include December sales, where sales were very strong. So those games sold about a million more copies in December.

Halo 2 (Released November 9th 2004 in Americas, November 11th 2004 in EMEAA/Japan).

  Game Sales Console Sales Software-Hardware Ratio Halo 2. vs Halo Reach
Pre-Orders N/A 163k/16,986k N/A N/A
Week 1 3,302k 238k/17,224k 0.194  
Week 2 690k/3,992k 307k/17,530k 0.229  
Week 3 409k/4,400k 461k/17,991k 0.246  
Week 4 (Dec 4th) 313k/4,713k 309k/18,300k 0.257  
Week 5

307k/5,020k

404k/18,703k 0.267  
Week 6 382k/5,403k 502k/19,205k 0.281  
Week 7 (Dec 25th) 432k/5,835k

481k/19,686k

0.294  
Week 8 (Jan 1st) 114k/5,949k 167k/19,853k 0.300  
Week 9 59k/6,009k 103k/19,956k 0.301  
Week 10 55k/6,064k 100k/20,055k 0.302  

The game went on to sell 8.38 million units, on a console which only sold 24.65 million units. This gives the final Software-Hardware ratio of 0.340. This means that 34% of X-Box owners have a copy of Halo 2, a game that came out 3 years after the launch of the console.

Halo 3 (Released on September 25th 2007 in Americas, September 26th 2007 in EMEAA, and September 27th 2007 in Japan)

  Game Sales Console Sales Software-Hardware Ratio Halo 3 vs. Halo Reach
Pre-Orders 1,100k 165k/11,599k 0.095 1 : 1.326 (currently)
Week 1 3,815k 230k/11,829k 0.323  
Week 2 (Oct 6th) 782k/4,598k 213k/12,042k 0.382  
Week 3 328k/4,926k 200k/12,242k 0.402  
Week 4 183k/5,109k 179k/12,421k 0.411  
Week 5 124k/5,232k 173k/12,594k 0.415  
Week 6 (Nov 3rd) 114k/5,346k 195k/12,789k 0.418  
Week 7 108k/5,454k 195k/12,984k 0.420  
Week 8 116k/5,571k 229k/13,213k 0.422  
Week 9 173k/5,743k 418k/13,631k 0.422  
Week 10 (Dec 1st) 163k/5,907k 324k/13,955k 0.423  

Currently Halo 3 has sold 11.14 million units, on a console with 42.71 million owners. So the Software-Hardware ratio is 0.261, meaning that 26.1% of 360 owners own a copy of Halo 3, a game that came out two years after the launch of the console.

Halo 3: ODST (Released on September 22nd 2009 in Americas and EMEAA, and September 24th, 2009 in Japan)

  Game Sales Console Sales Software-Hardware Ratio Halo 3: ODST vs. Halo: Reach
Pre-Orders 754k 129k/31,736k 0.024 1 : 1.935 (currently)
Week 1 2,216k 147k/31,882k 0.069  
Week 2 (Oct 3rd) 467k/2,683k 150k/32,033k 0.084  
Week 3 217k/2,900k 151k/32,183k 0.090  
Week 4 137k/3,036k 146k/32,330k 0.094  
Week 5 98k/3,135k 152k/32,482k 0.097  
Week 6 79k/3,214k 193k/32,675k 0.098  
Week 7 (Nov 7th) 78k/3,291k 311k/32,987k 0.100  
Week 8 84k/3,375k 438k/33,424k 0.101  
Week 9 116k/3,491k 358k/33,782k 0.103  
Week 10 183k/3,673 540k/34,322k 0.107  

Currently Halo 3: ODST has sold 5.58 million copies, on a console with 42.71 million units. So the software-hardware ratio is 0.131, meaning that 13.1% of all 360 owners have a copy of Halo 3: ODST, a game that released 4 years after the launch of the console. Currently the game still sells in the range of 20-40k weekly, on a console which sells 180-200k weekly, a ratio of approximately 0.12-0.20 games sold for each new 360 owners.

Note: The Jump in sales during week 8, to above PS3 levels, was due to the release of Modern Warfare 2 with a limited edition Modern Warfare 2 X-box 360, 250 gig.

Halo: Reach

  Game Sales Console Sales Software-Hardware Ratio vs. Halo 2 vs. Halo 3 vs. Halo 3: ODST
Pre-Orders 1,459k (currently) 42,71k (currently) 0.034 N/A x1.326 (currently) x1.935 (currently)
Week 1            
Week 2            
Week 3            
Week 4            
Week 5            
Week 6            
Week 7            
Week 8            
Week 9            
Week 10            

I will update this thread as weekly data comes in.

One important thing to notice is that Halo, Halo 2, and Halo 3 have attach rates of 26.1%, 34%, 26.1% respectively. If Halo Reach can achieve an attach at of say 20% by the end of 2011, that's 12 million units sold, and thats a conservative low estimate. If it achieves a 25% attach rate, that's 15 million units sold!

Also if Halo: Reach sells in a similar pattern to Halo 3, judging from Pre-orders it can do 19 million! That's a bit high for me, but all signs point to strong sales.

Halo: Reach will be released onto the X-box 360 when all previous Halo games sold on a smaller install base. This game will most likely be the best selling HD exclusive title this generation.


It's entirely possible there will be Halo 4 on Xbox 360 in 2013. That could top Reach.

 

We know Halo 4 is in development, and we can be sure it will come in 2013 (Main halo games come every 3 years). we just dont know if it will be on 360 or next Xbox.

 

I would have thought next Xbox, but there was a guy who's uncle supposedly works for 343 on neogaf, and he said it is for 360.