I cannot see anyone doing possible number break downs, so I will have a (very amateur) go!

At $60 a copy, on revenue of $400 million, this game would have sold 6,666,666 copies first week.

Now as Ethomaz kindly pointed out, if someone were to purchase a Halo 5 Xbox One Bundle (the only product significantly expensive and wide-spread enough to dramatically skew the numbers), that would count as the equivelant of a large number of game sales (Ethomaz said 10, the correct number is 8.3, but lets roll with 10 because some people might have gotten the game slightly cheaper in Europe, and it makes the math's easier).

Now. If we assume a whole QUARTER of the revenue came from the game/console special edition, it would mean that Microsoft sold:

- 5 MILLION copies of Halo 5 standalone
- 200 THOUSAND Halo 5 consoles bundled with the game (which wouldn't include any non-Halo Xbox's sold this week - typically around 100 thousand per week at this time).

Now, remembering that at those levels the discrepency in unit cost between 8.3 and 10 game copies per Halo 5 console bundle likely comfortable covers the additional revenue from more expensive Halo 5 limited editions, we get:

- 5.2 million copies of Halo 5 sold first week.
- Well over 200 thousands Xbox's sold this week.
- An attachment ratio of approximately 1/3.

Now, there are a whole range of potential variations in these numbers.

But the only way to argue that Microsoft sold significantly less games than this, would be to argue that the Xbox One itself had a ridiculously, stupidly, insanely excellent week. Put another way, you would need to argue that the Xbox One had an enormous week, driven by masses of sales of Halo 5 console bundles...while at the same time suggesting that somehow means Halo 5 flopped.

If that wasn't amusing enough, I am particularly enjoying people suggesting that this revenue is largely made up of additional controller sales, for a game they have spent weeks lambasting for not having split screen.

Game did amazingly people, cool your jets.

Also look at that 45 million req packs. That is a helluva lot of dosh coming in from the microtransactions, and after just a week!! That is incredible.

MS could basically make Halo 6 FTP without lowering the quality of the experience any further and make a huge amount of money from the req packs. They would easily double the req packs they sell cvompared to Halo 5 if they make the game FTP because fans of the game will intentionally by a lot of req packs in order to support the game.

Make it happen 343. Show the world that AAA FTP can be real!

Please.  Bitterness has nothing to do with it, as all sides had their bouts of bitterness.  And it definitely isn't any better or worse than before.  The reason so many left is because their side started "losing."

I don't know about you but I wouldn't count reports of poor retail sales at face value... Most XBO owners and especially halo fans bought it online no doubt about it... It's not a game you resell until the next one come and by then it's worthless on the second hand market.... So yeah pretty sure halo 5 will beat global sales of 4 in attached rate even in the UK... Actually everywhere, no doubt about it... And since when ethomaz says anything right about XBO???

I would hope MS sold well more than 200k X1's for Halo week. It's literally the flagship series for the brand, and this is the first mainline entry for the console.

We as currently set have no idea on the splits, or what is included. MS could be super creative and include non-H5 bundled X1s sold in this timeframe due to the (admittedly VERY probable) possibility that someone buying a $349 X1 during Halo week is probably buying it to play Halo 5. $349 X1 + $59 Halo 5 is the cheapest way to do it anyway, not everyone wants to pay $500 for LE.

As for the rest : REQ Pack sales, Controllers(?), Headsets(?), New/Renewed XBLG subs, etc, could all play a part in the quoted $400M number, or they might not.

5M+ 1st week sales are exceedingly unlikely given the X1 install base and accredited insider info from vetted people such as Abdiel (who on Neogaf/Bish certified, and a long history of great retailer info) that indicates that Halo 5 sold very well, but not particularly amazingly. Add in Amazon rankings, and it's all pretty muddy.

NPD will tell us a lot, but at the same time, may not really be enough either. Halo 5 will EASILY be the #1 software debut of the year so far, even without digital included.

The smart money is that H5 is a success on it's own terms (2015 console/FPS/platform realities considered), but will do less sales than Halo 3 or Halo 4. Not a disastrous falloff, but as we all know, there are ups and downs to everything.

It would have been interesting to know the Halo 3 first week revenue totals if the same items were included (hardware, misc merchandise, etc).

Can we have a moment of silence for all these users we have lost because of Halo?

The important variable is attached rate not total sales to compare success... Total sales is just good for business report...

Point being 5M on 10M is a bigger success than 10M on 100M even though commercial more viable... Of course halo 5 won't sell as much than 4 which had 70M install base (didn't check but more than 14M)

Halo 3 sold 3.8mil week 1 and had 40million hours of play. = 10:30 hours of playtime per sale
Halo 4 sold 3.65 week 1 and had  31.4 million hours of play = 8:40 hours of playtime per sale

Here are Halo 5's sales assuming it had Halo 3 like playtime, Halo 4 like playtime, and playtime continued to decline.

Halo 5 has 21 million hours of playtime at 10:30 hours per sale => 2mil sales week 1.
Halo 5 has 21 million hours of playtime at 8:40 hours per sale=>2.4mil sales week 1.
Halo 5 has 21 million hours of playtime at 7:40 hours per sale => 2.8mil sales week 1.

Halo 5 probably had between 2 and 2.8million sales. I would say those sales are pretty mediocre but the decline is less than 50% from Halo 4.
Compared to Call of Duty which declined from 3.6mil (Ghosts 360) to 1.7mil (Advance Warfare XB1), much bigger decline.

People who expected Halo 3 like numbers were expecting too much. Halo: Reach and Halo 4 only managed their sales due to the massive install bases. Halo 3 sold so well on a tiny install base because it was the most played multiplayer game till MW2 came out. Nowadays battlefield, call of duty, destiny, halo, and heck even GTA are all fighting for the multiplayer fps userbase on the xbox one.

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.

So you are claiming that >50% of Halo 5 sales will be digital? I think there is considerable doubt about that.

40% would be a pretty amazing digital sales level. My feeling is that people with a special attachment to a game would tend to want to have a physical copy in their lives, not all but a pretty high proportion. I know for me a game I feel a special connection to I will absolutely buy physical, whereas a game I merely like I will buy digital once our download speeds improve and if I have the HDD space.