Does anyone even have the actual #s of online players Halo 2 had, or are you discussing numbers out your butt?

There have been 1.2m users that have played Halo 3 online within 12 hours. Mind you, it's not out in the majority of Europe, and Japan.

The FACT is that 60% of Xbox 360s are connected to Xbox Live - not gold cards. That 40% don't have internet access (like me), therefore even if they had the game, couldn't get ahold of broadband, even with a 48hr free gold card.

Beyond that, the gold cards (48hrs) are a one-off. If you've ever used a 48hr gold card before, that's about it, for Gold usage, I believe. Atleast from the 48hr cards.

Therefore, one can easily assume that over 2 million copies were sold day-1 in the US, UK, Aus and NZ - if not more.

We'll have to wait for final tallies, but I believe that Halo 3 will easily hit 2.5m worldwide first week, but will probably be more likely to hit 3-3.5m units. Very impressive, Star Fox!

@Rocketpig

That world map is freakin awesome!! I wish I lived in India or something.. that way I could see my own little light!!!

My live has held up pretty well. The problem is you can't just build systems on the maximum usage possible. How many fifteen lane highways do you see in real life. The point is you cannot build your systems around extraordinary events. You could but you would be wasting a lot of money and resources for no relevant gain.

You have to be realistic we do not have a policeman for three people to prevent crime totally. We do not have a fireman for every house. We do not have a hospital on every street corner. The reason we do not have these things is that they are excessively expensive like setting up a system that can handle over twenty times the average load it sees daily.

What impresses me is that so many of us did and are getting to play reasonably well. Personally I have only lost connection a couple times.

 One issue with this, though, is that when franchises come to next-gen consoles, the hype level is boosted.  See, for example, the increased sales of Final Fantasy X versus the previous (and subsequent) two, or Metal Gear Solid 2 versus 3.   It's not a universal thing by any means - Halo 2 well outsold Halo 1, but I think that it will boost the game's sales.

I am new so bare with me.  There is all this talk about Halo 3 selling millions, and Bill Gates rolling in the money.  Has anyone figured out how many copies they have to actually sell to break even after all the rediculous amount of money spent on marketing for this game?  Has the X-Box devision at Microsoft broke even yet, or are they still in the red? 

Allegedly, $30 million were spent in developing, plus $30 million in marketing and bonuses for the developers. They will more than break even with this game, since it will be a multi-million seller for sure...

Here is another scenario, I have Halo 3, I have Live Gold, I have broadband, and I have played the game. but I'm sure like alot of people I only played last night so far, and I had people over to check it out, so we played split screen, on local settings, hence never logged in(unless it somehow automatically logs in even on local. I don't think it does, so I'm sure others, checked out campaign, played co-op, or local deathmatch/forge. BTW it sucks you lose your single player save if you choose to restart the game in co-op, what's up with that?

I have the limited edition and it did NOT come with the 48-hour Live, though I already have Gold ...

I definitely want to see numbers on how well Halo 3 is selling ...

Nah. I can't see this ultra hype as a stuff for $30 million... Lost Planet marketing cost $20 million and was nowhere close to monster Halo 3 campaign.