Halo 3 Registers Biggest Day in US Entertainment History with $170 Million in Sales

As the topic is H3's US sales, Europe's takings on any other entertainment aren't that important, are they?

 

600 000 PS3's for 48 hrs.
600 euro each.

 

The statement is $170 million is a record sale for 24 hours in the US. Other regions and other lengths of time are totally irrelevant to that point. Anyone questioning MS's claim this is a record for a single entertainment 'item' needs to reference a 24 hour sales period for whatever item in the US.

 

I don't think that it is for these purposes. Either way, I think it goes without saying we know MS is referring specifically to media in this case.

 

So without the hardware being counted, that leaves the Halo comics, toys, clothing, swag, novels, and soundtracks. Even if they rake in 6M+ copies by the end of the year (just as Halo 2 did), they've got a long long way to go still. Of course, there is the extra month and a half from being released in September (relative to Halo 2), but... I guess we'll see how that goes.

 

But won't a lot the 1 billion be contributed from hardware. A million bump in console sales including reg skus plus Halo3 themed sku (this is a number that MS has a lot flexibility with, its basically a fill in the blank), non themed/Halo themed peripheral, all those additional revenue streams you mentioned and 6 million in software sales and it would very easy to say that Halo generated a billion in sales.

 

It's also worth mentioning that buying a copy of Halo is a lot more expensive than buying the latest Harry Potter book or a cinema ticket. You can sell a lot less units of Halo, and each one is the the equivalent of several movie seats or books. That's why the spinners post the dollar figure, rather than the number of units sold. It wouldn't be so impressive to claim 100K units shipped, thus beating 500k bums on seats for the latest HP movie.

 

A dollar figure is a better measurement than actual number of product sold. Saying Coke sold 2.2 million cans of Cola over a 24 hour period isn't the same as 2.2 million in game software.

Try estimating the sales of Halo3 at same price of a movie ticket or Harry Potter Book.

 

But likewise saying you made x dollars of sales thus making it more than a book or movie costing a totally different price isn't more than marketing spin.

 

That's why the comparison is flawed, because when I go to the moves I spend half the price of Halo3. Your or part of your family may play the game at home, whereas my wife wouldn't. So for me, to take two of us to the cinema costs less than one of me playing Halo 3 at home.

That's why comparing to movies or books is flawed, because unit prices are so different, as well as the number of units sold. I'm pretty sure more people paid to see the last Potter movie than paid to get Halo 3. Yet one Halo 3 sale is probably worth four HP moviegoers.

 

Not really. these companies are in it to make money, not sell units. Given a choice between making $30 million in many Harry Potter sales, or $170 million in less game sales, pretty much every company out there would choose the latter. The idea with the games industry financials is to show the rest of the world that there's serious money here. It shouldn't be confused with reach of the industry though. If MS were to claim more people played H3 than read HP, that'd be bunk, and if the games industry is trying to show games have as wide an appeal as movies and books, they'd need to use unit sales rather than gross earnings.

 

A dollar can be look at as a measure of value or demand as it calulated using both product price and the number of products sold.

It provides a better outlook then products sold alone.

Offer Harry Potter Books or movie tickets at $60-$70 dollars a pop and the gap between total figures would widen further.

And of course its marketing spin, that all these numbers are even when comparing more closely related products, unless you are a stock holder.

 

Fool! You forgot lunch boxes, beach towels, and bed sheets. I've already pre-ordered my limited edition Comforter with the glowing head of master chief and matching pillow case!

 

um so will we be measuring NPD figures in dollar terms from now on?

 

Dollar figures are constantly used to track the performance of the gaming market overall.

What ever unit you use is dependent on what you trying to measure.

 

I see this is US alone - do we know any worldwide day 1 sales figures?

 

Only if your interested in how much money a title is making instead of how many people are playing it. Like choosing to measure things in centimetres or litres - different measures for different purposes.

 

Not true, due to the fact that a dollar figure can gives a more meaningful picture than unit sales when talking about the market as a whole.

You ever seen hardware, software and peripheral sales calculated as one big sum in a measurement of units sold.

 

The lunch boxes will be $50 and you can only fit three candy bars inside. The beach towels will be big enough for a child ($30), and the bed sheets will have a reflective orange coating ($200).

Oh yeah... I wonder why they didn't release a worldwide total (in addition). Because of currency

 

No. And we didn't get a unit sales (only dollar) because it doesn't appear to have topped Halo 2 day-1 unit sales. My guess is about 2.18M.