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

[Arkaign]

starcraft said:

binary solo said:

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.

No, I do not really think that Halo 5 sold 5 million copies in its first week. I do think that there is an enormous amount of revenue that cannot be accounted for by simply saying 'but rec packs and controllers.' Especially as the game is not split screen, and the only significant hardware outside of the console is controllers.

Halo 3 sold 5 million copies in a month. It is the best point of comparison, as it launched with the closest install base. By that metric, no matter what the split of revenue between game copies, controllers, DLC and Xbox One Halo 5 bundles, Halo 5 is an enormous success.

What my example was intended to do, was nudge people to either recognise the very obvious success of the game, or demonstrate how they break down that $400 million in such a way as to indicate the game sold poorly. They'll struggle to do the latter I suspect, as the game's success is self evident at this point.

Well, we also have another huge question coming up in terms of determining H5's success (and by extension to some degree, X1's 2015 fate) :

Will it have legs? Halo 3 launched in a different era. PS3 was still largely irrelevant in the US/UK at that point, and there wasn't the 1-2-3 multiplat combo of COD:Blops/Star Wars/Fallout following it's release footsteps in short order.

It could very well hold strong for the entire holidays to come.

It could also begin to drop off by a huge margin in the weeks to come. 

And it could also be somewhere in the middle of those scenarios (most likely?)

If H5 tails off and hits 3.5M LTD 2015, then falls to maybe 5.5-6M total LTD, that's a pretty drastic decline for a mainline entry.

So who knows, a lot of games with massive fanbases like this are severely front-loaded as opposed to traditional evergreen titles like Diablo, Starcraft, Minecraft, GTA, etc. Some of that might be distinct competition. GTA doesn't really have a close equal in the gaming sphere. Neither does Minecraft. Or Mario for that matter. But Halo is now another SP/MP FPS in a sea of others (and with two, arguably three depending on how you view FO4, MEGA competitors ready to launch imminently with large amounts of hype).

The best I can say to everyone is please chill out. Ninja PR means we know little about the reality of sales yet.

The smart money is that it's way better than terrible, and probably a good bit less than the peaks of H3/H4.

YMMV