If this ends up being true and sells many 360s, I wonder how much advantage it will gain on the PS3, and what Sony's response will be.

This could also mean that the Wii won't catch the 360 soon (due to supply issues)... Even if it does in the next few months, the 360 could make a comeback in the holiday season.

One can always expect some surprise from Microsoft. I can definitely see the 360 executives giggling and cooking up such a move to crush Sony, unless they're really worried about making the 360 profitable soon...

ok, I can see halo 3 being big, but 15 million is ridiculous. That would be more than the first two Halo games combined (not to mention 1.5 times the current Xbox 360 user base) If it's good it might crack 10 million, but that's pushing it

Here's the issue: MS needs money. In order to get money, that have to not only sell games, but move hardware as well. Bill Gates already said that the central battleground is holiday 2007. MS by far has the best lineup of holiday games (not saying Wii or PS3 is bad), but they have the biggest # of titles guarenteed to do obviously well. Now, with so much at stake, plus the fact the 360 is making money now (and should goto 65nm by then, therefore increasing profitability), its entirely impossible that they not drop the price. IMO, we'll see a price drop in September or October. Personally, with flegling 360 sales in the US, I'd drop the friggin' price in 3 weeks when Forza hits. The 360 hasn't had a US price drop yet, in every other market it's had a drop at some point. MS wasn't afraid to drop the price and pack Blue Dragon in Japan, why not do it in the US. IMO, the Wii should pass the 360 w/w sales wise in September, but the 360 should easily come back due to huge sales globally (with a major YOY increase in all markets due to LO, H3 and GTAIV) to re-take the lead till Febuary or March.

ok, this is the sentence that got me: "Many of Gamestop’s employees believe that a large portion of the preorders are being made by consumers that don’t even own a Xbox 360, that are just waiting for the price of the system to go down. " This very sentence tells me that this aticle is not totally legit. What happened with Halo2 was that the majority of the copies sold were to people who already had an Xbox, and Microsoft knows this. However, they used the fact that they had a good selling game as a kind of propaganda, they made people believe that because they have a game that sells well they also have a system selling well. That sentence there (as this article is on this website, its obviously gonna be biased towards Xbox and i bet Microsoft had some input into it as well) shows that Microsoft are trying to give people the view that the 360 will continue on form as a result of Halo 3, despite recent poor sales. There will be a boost in sales, yes, i guarantee that, but the majority of these "4 million copies" (that seems a lil too high as well if you ask me) will go to the devout followers who already have a 360.

I can't see why it couldn't be true. It's a popular series and since the story continues in Halo 3, people who played Halo 2 want Halo 3. In the other Halo 3 necessarily isn't a game for people who haven't played Halos before. It will have better rate in units sold to prequel owners than possibly any game before and it's because of the story. I think comparision to Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions would be good, if you watched Reloaded, then you had to see Revolutions, because Reloaded didn't have an ending. Anyway, i believe that 50-70% of Halo 3 sales come from preorders.

Just how people work ...

Usually, only a small percentage of people who buy a game pre-order it (as a guess somewhere in the 10% to 20% range); 4 Million people would be somewhere in the 40% to 80% pre-order range.

Also, are you certain 5 Million people played Halo 2 online? I thought there were only about 2 Million XBox Live accounts on the XBox ...