Here is more from Abdiel the best buy insider
I don't know. It was a big fuckin' seller. Still sold an absolute monster of copies in our stores. We just didn't get the same momentum around the bundles themselves for the hardware side of things. It was the standalone game we had moving big numbers.
My private observation has been that it really does seem like most of the major Halo audience has found reasons to acquire the system at some point leading up to this point. Whether at launch, just due to knowing the title is coming (These are the diehards, they saw a Halo 5 announcement at all and were instantly on board), then the fans of MS's first party stuff that were sold on Gears or Forza, etc., then the Titanfall pick ups, and then the MCC push.
Halo is still a big damn franchise. And it did really damn well, as far as I can tell. Just didn't seem to overwhelm the sudden friggin' storm of holiday frenzy that a price cut setting in just as the holidays getting started seems to do. The timing of that drop was perfect, honestly. It hit right as things are fairly quiet, so shoppers aren't really wary about hitting most stores, as the lines aren't bad, but all our prep for holiday shoppers are largely in place with the new queuing formats, etc. so it's all optimized.
I checked another few districts before I headed home tonight. It looks like across the country, most Best Buys are following that trend, where the PS4 is leading the XB1 for October. How much varies. Sometimes its higher, sometimes its a lot closer, but it is still generally a lead of some kind. There also seems to be a lot of the Halo bundles still available. To put in perspective... In over 50 stores within a 400 mile radius, none of them were sold out of the Halo bundle. None.
Interesting, interesting.
