"The 4million preorders was an official announcement by Gamestop/Ebgames" d@mn we have alot of dumbasses in the U.S

My cousin has the Halo beta...one of many...I personally am unimpressed with the game. I only reserved Halo 3 for the campaign ... Yea...sounds maybe alittle silly..but i really love the story of Halo...both the games and the books. I want to know what happens. I kinda agree that the mass beta was a bad idea...it really shook me and my friends with uncertainty whether or not Halo 3 would be both getting..least for multiplayer reason... As for the beta itself...i would rather play Halo 2 but have them remove the double shot and glitches...

The 4 million was in a Rumor Control feature on GameSpot and it was considered BOGUS.

I think the 4 million preorders cannot possibly be right.  It is much more believable if you consider that number to be retailer orders, as every retailer will want to have plenty in stock when the game comes out.

But back on topic, not sure about the effect on overall sales.  Why don't we consider another instance where a similar stunt was pulled with a high-profile game.  In this case I'm talking about Metal Gear Solid 2 and the inclusion of a demo with the game Zone of the Enders.  A lot of ZoE games were sold because people wanted the MGS2 demo, much like currently Crackdown's sales have been bolstered by the Halo 3 beta.  How would people interpret MGS2 sales following that similar strategy?

http://vgchartz.com/worldtotals.php?name=metal+gear+solid&console=&publisher=&sort=Total 

The numbers on this site put MGS2 at 2.29m in the U.S. (not sure if Japan had the demo, so I'll keep it to the U.S.) while MGS1 managed 2.81m.  Does anyone hold the opinion that this drop was partially/all due to people being disappointed with the demo included with ZoE?

I don't have much of an opinion about this, but I thought it would be good for people to look at this as a similar strategy to what Microsoft is doing currently.

Halo 3 is still going to sell a ton. Certainly more than any Wii game and more than any PS3 game by far, more than any other 360 game, and more than any game except maybe a handheld game that doesn't coun because it's $20 cheaper on $129 hardware.

There are a lot of dumbasses in Japan so it might not sell that good there, that's about it. 

they wont finish the fight my guess "the fight hasn't finished" HALO 4 on XBOX 720. The only game that sells a XBOX. BTW you Halo fan boys, this game only sells in the US and not worldwide. Enuff said.

"There are a lot of dumbasses in Japan so it might not sell that good there, that's about it. "

lol? arent you contridicting what your saying... and what i said??

 asians do not like Halo, it wont sell in asia period.

 GoW will outsell Halo3 in japan imo

gears is the far superior game..played the halo beta and wasnt too shocked how much fun i wasnt having compared to gears.

 No running in halo?..imo its a must..its not fun crawling around, and jumping  10-15 feet vertical to avoid getting killed,not to forget to mention you have to shoot ppl 50 times to kill them...LOL.. dam talk about a brainless game.

Saying that Asians do not like Halo is being stereo typical.

To whom said "the only reason H3 is #1 on hype meter since Beta", there are 2 issues with that statement in light of the main topic: #1. If that was the case, then Beta wasn't a huge mistake, as it got the fanbase re-hyped #2. Halo 3 has held the #1 spot for nearly 6 months - since Zelda:TP and Gears of War launched, it has never given up the #1 spot to my knowledge, and even before then, held onto #1 for quite some time. Therefore the beta launch really did nothing to increase/decrease numbers.

Halo 3 might be the last nail in the coffin for the Playstation 3. It's going to be beyond amazing. It's going to be way better than Gears of War. It's also going to boost the sales of Xbox 360 dramatically.