Uncharted 4

I think looking at previous numbers is foolish to do now. The PS4 has a crazy advantage in install base which the PS3 never did. And Uncharted has grown in popularity with every iteration. I think the lack of exclusives thus far, the "from the developers of The Last of Us" tag, and a large marketing budget and Uncharted 4 takes the win on this one. Halo 5 will do well too, and will prob increase XOne sales, but the install base is too far behind right now and Halo has lost some if it's popularity to COD for me to think it can launch this fall against another FPS and have just as good of sales as Uncharted 4. Lifetime, I will say Uncharted holds the lead by a Mil or so at the end.

Quick look at pre-roders shows Halo's dominance. Sorry Uncharted will never be on the level of Halo.

FW sales will be close IMO, uncharted fan base has consistently expanded with each main game while halo has peaked and I suspect H5 won't put up the same launch numbers as in the past.

First week:
Halo 5 - 1.8m
Uncharted 4 - 1.6-1.8m

Lifetime sales = U4>H5

I guess Halo. I don't know anyone who plays it anymore, but data shows how strong that series is sales wise. Uncharted over time will still do very well though.

Why don't you just do an Uncharted 4 vs Halo 5 in the U.S. and just leave globally out of it. PS4 and Xbox One are pretty much neck and neck in the U.S.

Uncharted 4 globally.

Because the total sales of Uncharted as dispersed pretty evenly across the world. Whereas 2/3 - 3/4 of Halo sales are in the US.

It'd be like saying "why don't you just compare Gran Turismo vs Forza in Europe and leave globally out of it". Nowadays, GT sells mostly in Europe. Whereas Forza sells roughly evenly everywhere. Leaving global sales out of it isn't interesting.

I did, but Halo popularity is only waning at the fringes among the "casual" end of the Halo market. And indeed you could argue that really only Halo 3 benefitted from that casual end of the market. All the other Halo entries have not substantially grown past the benchmark set by Halo2 on Xb og.

The core Halo fans (the 8.5 million who bought Halo 2) are still there. And they will all buy Halo 5. And 2.5-ish million of those ~8 million will buy Halo 5 week 1 in the USA. If Halo 5 is an actually disappointing game foir core Halo fans then yes perhaps the Halo franchise will see a serious decline. But if 343 is more or less able to meet Halo fan expectations then there is no reason why  Halo 5 and future main entries in the Halo franchise won't continue to sell in the 8 millions for as long as there is an Xbox console. 

It is very hard to guage the digital sales effect, but if we assume 10 million has been reached for Reach and Halo 4 physical+digital, then that represents only a 17% growth over Halo 2 on the back of a 350% growth in install base from gen 6 to gen 7. Which basically means no growth at all. Even the growth Halo 3 saw is not ver spectacular in the context of 360's final install base. But in context of the install base for 360 at the time it is a very good result. But also consider the fact that most of Halo's growth came from outside the USA. Halo's US fanbase has been very stable, and rather static, ever since Halo 2. So in the USA at least Halo has neother been on the increase or the decline. It has mostly retained its core fanbase. This all points to the install base, particularly for the USA, being irrelevant for Halo. And it also points to the likelihood that Halo 5 in the USA > Uncharted globally for week 1.

LTD is a somewhat different beast, and it might be dangerous to put money on which one will end up selling best. If there are a lot of people who have converted from 360 to PS4 and they are not tempted back by Halo, then that might bring in a whole new crowd of Uncharted buyers. But they are unlikely to be week 1 buyers if they've never played before. That's why I think at this E3 Sony would be making a pretty smart move by announcing the release of the Uncharted remaster trilogy for PS4. MS has preped the Halo ground with MCC, and if Sony truly sees Uncharted as a flagship franchise they would certainly be justified in giving UC the MCC treatment: Uncharted NDC.

The pre-orders are only for US, where Halo get's vast majority of it's sales from, unlike Uncharted.

Also PS4 has alot of other exclusives coming before Uncharted, and with Quantum break delayed to 2016, and Fable Legends being F2P, Halo 5 will literally be the first retail exclusive for XB1 since Halo: MCC last year.