Halo 5: Guardians sells more than $400 million (games and hardware)

[binary solo]

starcraft said:

binary solo said:

If MS is adding the 45 million req packs into their $400 million revenue then that takes a large chunk of the $400 million out of the equation for game sales as well.

Also, according to VGC Halo 3 took 4 weeks to reach 5 million, and 5 weeks to reach 5.2 million. Reach also took 4 week, Halo 4 also took 4 week, but of course Halo 4 had digital as well. But still, there is no way any of the previous Halos got anwhere close to 5 million in the first week with or without digital sales added to VGC.

I guarantee if Halo 5 sold 5 million copies in the first week MS would be putting that up in the biggest brightest lights in every gaming publication in the world. They have not, ergo Halo 5 did not come anywhere close to 5 million week 1. If the game sold 4 million week 1 that would also be a record and it would be being hailed as a massive achievement. Therefore I say using revenue as a basis for guessing number of games sold is highly unreliable.

More than likely, because unit sales have not been mentioned at all, the game sold under 3.5 million week 1. While that is far from being disappointing, it is also not a number that can inspire and amaze, because the previous main entries for Halo all did better. Disappointing for a Halo title would be under 2.5 million. Sales between 2.5 and 3.5 million appears to be the ballpark. 

Considering total hours played in that first full week, 3 million is a pretty reasonable guess I think. ~7hrs average total play time per game sold, factoring in shortness of campaign and many people not playing the whole campaign, or even any campaign, seems like a reasonable guess. If anything ~7hrs total play time per game sold feels a bit low. But I think kowen may reflect a significant number of Halo fans, i.e. the fanbase is ageing as a large number have been with the fanchise since the original game, and as we get older we have less time we can devote to gaming. I would be surprised to see VGC publish more than 2.5 million FW. The difference being that there are 2 sales days not accounted in VGC's week 1 data compared to MS's "first week" PR, and there are digital sales VGC doesn't count.

Certainly, REQ packs could skew the numbers from absolutely enormous to just close to enormous. Bare in mind it will certainly include the large number of free req packs that have been given out. Note they very specifically said 'acquired,' not sold. To give you an idea, if you watched Nightfall, you'll get 3-5 REQ packs immediately just for that. Posted on the Halo forums? There is another pack. Played the Beta a bit? There is another 3-5 packs. Pre-order and/or buy a special edition? Another few packs available. People can very feasibly have 10 packs and not have spent a cent for them.

As has been detailed multiple times in this thread, Microsoft's intial PR around previous (very successful) Halo launches has focused very intently on revenue for investors, not exact sales for gamers.

If the game has 'only' sold 3 million first week (which would be massive), console sales must be HUGE.

There is simply no way Halo 5 did 5 million week 1. And I agree that console sales won't be vastly different than past halo launches (200K range). So we can take roughly $100 million out of the equation for console hardware sales. We don't know how many req packs have been sold rather than earned, but I accept that it's likel most of them have been earned rather than sold. That leaves us with hidden revenue streams MS has not explicitly mentioned which are probably captured in the "hardware" category. Hardware is not just consoles, because hardware can include peripherals (controllers) and Halo themed merchandise.

Surely, logically you can't really think Halo 5 has sold 5 million in the first week. The only way that is a logically tennable number is if all or most of the other main Halo titles sold more than 5 million in their first week, and VGC is thus significantly undertracking the opening week of all those past Halo titles. That is certainly possible, given we know VGC software accuracy is pretty low in many cases. But if VGC tracking of past halo games is good to within 10 or 15% then 5 million for Halo 5 is absoltely out of the question.

For most games 3 million is massive. For Halo and what it means for the Xbox brand 3 million is decent.