Microsoft adds that worldwide the game made $200m in its first day of release

MCV can reveal that 300,000 copies of Microsoft’s Halo Reach were sold in the game’s first 24 hours on sale in the UK.

This already puts Halo Reach at number ten in the all-time UK weekly sales league table, leaving it in prime position to climb the listings through to the weekend.

Lifetime UK sales for the Halo series stand at 3,674,840 units as of July 2010, representing a total return of £109,068,532. Worldwide Halo series sales stand at around 34m units.

Microsoft’s Phil Spencer has also confirmed that the game made $200m across the globe in its first day of release.

“This is excellent news for the video games and interactive entertainment industry, demonstrating how games sales continue to increase despite difficult economic circumstances,” UKIE director general Michael Rawlinson stated.

“With one in every three people classifying themselves as gamers, and with over half of UK households containing at least one video games console, the UK video games market is in great shape for the future.”

Any doubts about Halo Reach’s ability to outstrip the exceptional market performance of Halo 3 were hushed when just hours after hitting retail Halo Reach had already toppled Halo 3’s concurrent online user record on Xbox Live.

Critically it’s proving a smash, too, with a Metacritic average that puts most titles to shame.

To put all this in perspective, however, back in November 2009 Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sold 1.23m copies in its first 24 hours in the UK, with combined revenue from here and North America hitting $310m.

Taking into account the fact that MW2 sales were split across multiple formats, that still means that Halo Reach sold about half as many copies on Xbox 360 as Activision's shooter achieved.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/40888/330k-UK-Halo-Reach-sales-on-day-one

Huge difference...

MW2 =  1.23M (first 24 hours in the UK)
Reach = 300k  (first 24 hours in the UK)

Edit: MW2 numbers is combined (I guess)... but huge difference anyway.

Well you can't compare the total of MW2 on multiple platforms to Reach on 360 only.

MCV still says that sales of MW2 on 360 were probably around double Halo Reach's sales (first 24 hours for both). That should show that although Halo: Reach has performed very well, it is nowhere near the same size as the COD franchise right now in Europe.

InB4 someone without their PS3 trophy collection in their sig tries to downplay Halo sales.

The game is still going to outsell anything else this year on one platform so what's the problem.  It's not like these sales are bad.

Lower than expected.

I realize that it probably came across that I was trying to downplay the sales. That wasn't my intention. 300,000 sales in 24 hours is amazing. There are some games that don't ever get that many sales. It's a testament to the love that fans around the world (or in this case the UK, but it's similar elsewhere) have for Halo. It's one of the most beloved franchises of all time and is clearly loved by millions of people.

I was just trying to say that Halo isn't as big as Modern Warfare (or Black Ops is looking to be), in Europe. I just don't think that it's right to say "you can't compare the total of MW2 on multiple platforms to Reach", when the article says that MW2 probably sold approximately double what Reach has in the opening 24 hours. It's nothing to be ashamed of, as Call of Duty has just become such a massive brand. And I'm not saying Reach is inferior in terms of quality because it has lower sales. I'm not a Halo fan (the only I owned was the first and that wasn't anything special to me), but I still recognize that it is an excellently made game. I'm just trying to say that if people are going to acknowledge Reach's (truly amazing opening day) sales in the UK, they shouldn't try to hide from the fact that MW2 is still bigger (this is only for the UK/Europe, in the US they are quite comparable).

it seems reach is doing badly. no way around it. i dont know what went wrong.

I think part of the problem is MS watered down the brand with ODST, and possibly Wars. Personally I liked both of those games a lot, but I'm betting when a lot of casual people see Halo: Reach rather than Halo: 4, they weren't sure if was another ODST style game or what. But that's what Bungie gets for doing a prequel. Never been a fan of prequels.

Another possibility is that the Modern Warfare/Call of Duty series has more thouroughly surpassed Halo than I realized. Maybe people are just COD nuts now and dont care about Halo. Which is sad to me, because as a single player experience, I can say that Reach is approximately 1,500,564464,756544 times better than an  MW game.

I suspect the game's sales may have unusually good legs though, because it's simply an amazingly good game.

Edit: I just realized though, the 200 million of Reach revenue statistic tells a different story.

If Reach=200m

and MW2=310m across two platforms...

It's likely Reach exceeded the 360's share of MW2's 310m sales...(I'm guessing the PS3 accounted for more than 110m of that 310 m, so the 360 version of MW2 <200m). So I dont know, maybe that points to spectacular USA Reach sales.

I was just thinking about the revenue as well. All in all both games sold great and in the end it makes gaming more of a hot commodity.