The Halo Effect certainly seems to be there.  There was a lot of argument and conjecture about how many consoles Halo 3 might sell.  Here's the thread I started about how many consoles Halo 2 moved and the ensuing discussion on how many Halo 3 would move. 

http://vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=6666

I stated that I felt an increase of 100K qualified as "moving consoles".  Did we do that or more?

Another Interesting Thread:

http://vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?start=50&id=6200

I believe we need some seasoning for the crow.

Anway, I'm just curious what some of you think is a reasonable number from September and what you think the October number will be overall heading into the holidays...(total and what number Halo 3 was primarily responsible for)

IMO and only based on looking at every weeks charts, I would say that Halo 3 initially did not move as many hardware as I expected (feared )

But the console could really hold up great after the launch and it looks as if might not Halo itself, but the launch building around it moved a lot of hardware and is still moving loads, which is an even better thing. I wonder how the 360 will sell after Christmas.

I'd say Halo3 moved somewhere between 0 and 528,000 360's in the US. I think it's impossible to really narrow it down further than something like 100k-400k. You also have to consider whether to count systems sold to repeat buyers. Of course a system sold is a system sold but it would affect future software sales and it further lowers the validity of the claim that over 3 million Halo fans were just waiting for Halo 3 to buy a 360 (well, if that claim can get any lower after only 200k increase in sales). From here on out it will only get more difficult due to the chicken and egg element here. Is someone buying a 360 and Halo 3 in January buying a 360 because of Halo 3 or is he buying Halo 3 because he bought a 360?

wouldnt it be kind of a safe bet to get the number of halo edition 360?

just wondering.. but what does it matter anyway? halo 3 will eventually sell close to 10m. people buy a console for completely different reasons, one game, two games, vastness of the game library. i really dont see how you could get a accurate number, or why you would want to.

Well, you have a few numbers to go by:

The X360 sold *roughly* 70% more units week-over-week vs. August. With no truely major hardware-selling games outside of Halo, and Eternal Sonata.

So I'd say that it *seems* like Halo 3 might of moved 150k to 300k units.

*however*, the more important thing: it seems that the release of Halo 3, more than anything, started moving X 360s based not only on Halo (due to the fact the X360 didn't have a huge spike that week, but a gradual climb) shows that in many gamers minds, Halo 3 was just one of the games they want.

So really, the issue is: how many units can you say a game like Wii Sports or Halo 3 moves when there isn't a huge unexplained spike, but a stronger trending of sales?


So IMO, it seems, more than anything, Halo is a mere reason for what seems to be extra hundreds of thousands to buy a X360, ontop of whatever other games they want (primarily Oblivion and Gears of War), rather than everyone *just* buying the 360 for Halo - after all, we'd see US sales plummet down to 70k/wk, but instead their 50,000 units/wk above that.

I think, not playing analyst-mod like The Source, but I think maybe about 550k in the US and 900k WW.

Halo kicked ass that what we have.

October world wide, 1.5 million!

I agree with the Stick. I think the number of people who bought a Console exclusively because of Halo 3 is difficult to tell because there were other games recently released and others on the near term horizon. I would look at Halo 3 as more of a catalyst than a pure system seller in that it got some people off of the sidelines and into a 360. It could be that Halo 3 was just a small portion of that reason, but if Halo 3 was any part of it, then you have to give credit where credit is due. In the end, I think you can look at it as having moved some consoles AND kickstarted some 360 momentum. I'd say that's considered a success by anyone but the worst of fanboys....

And to me, atleast, Halo being a good catalyist is very important. Since the X360 has an actually big library, with many, many good games, I think sales will be very good (and hopefully another price drop).

Ultimately, the US market is very different than the others: sales are based on price + precieved game library. Look at the Wii in the US vs. Japan. The precieved game library is much better in the US than Japan in some ways, and that allows the Wii to sell much much more in the US than Japan, despite in summer months, the Wii was selling very similar in both countries.

So if thats the case, the X360 could trend to 100k+ per week. If that lasted until November, expect a huge November. Why? Momentum, and a strong precieved library will propell X360 sales into PS2-like proportions, since very few have addopted to a next-gen platform. If the consumers feel the games are there, we could even see 3m units in Nov-Dec in the US.

I dont expect Halo to make a lot of things outside NA/UK
but well, it is so hard to know what effects are relative to Halo3 and what effects are relative to Bioshock review or price cut or even Elite release.

For sure, it helped in NA/UK (NPD)