GameDaily estimates Halo 3 sold 2.48 mil units day one

by Alexander Sliwinski { Sep 28th 2007 at 11:00PM }

And now a reading from the book of GameDaily, who presents their breakdown of the Halo 3 sales. Using the knowledge of $170 million made figure by Microsoft and checking with retail sources, they used some fancy arithmetics to get themselves statistics. According to their source for "every four standard copies sold, two limited edition copies and one legendary edition is sold." Meaning the percentages are 14% Legendary, 29% Limited (or Scratched edition) and 57% Standard. They figure the breakdown is:

Standard edition: 1,600,000
Limited edition: 694,000
Legendary edition: 187,000

GameDaily concludes that 2.48 million units sold on day one. Hopefully we'll get the full numbers from Microsoft in the near future for those who love themselves some statistics. So, who wants to start poking holes in the estimates first?

[Thanks NJkid1]

Tags: breakdown, edition, halo3, sales

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

ncxcstud @ Sep 28th 2007 11:03PM

wow....that's a lot of haloz...

blooh (CDF - Ass Ring) @ Sep 28th 2007 11:17PM

yup

colin @ Sep 28th 2007 11:20PM

all our haloz are belong to you now. enjoys them.

Badboy1979 @ Sep 28th 2007 11:20PM

IF that's just for the U.S., I wonder how many sold in the UK on the 26th?

Congrats MS/Bungie... I've been playing ur game all week :)

teenagertc @ Sep 28th 2007 11:21PM

As our President says, and what Jack Thompson must lament..."Thats a lot of childrens [sic] buying Halo"

NaeemTHM @ Sep 29th 2007 10:08AM

Childrens learn good...God help our president.

Only anther year of his crap.

ap0c0lypt1c @ Sep 28th 2007 11:28PM

WOW!

James @ Sep 28th 2007 11:31PM

I was close! I had the approximate number estimated at: "An Assload!"

Plan to pick up a copy tomorrow, hopefully theres still a decent amount of stock.

Badger_badger_badger @ Sep 28th 2007 11:37PM

Maybe I'll pick up a 360 someday.

lgndk11r @ Sep 28th 2007 11:39PM

How much will Halo make AFTER they add the European, Japanese, and Asian sales numbers?

Flyy (NDF) @ Sep 28th 2007 11:40PM

Am i the only one who Lol'd at the guy's "Laptop" in the picture?

John Doe @ Sep 29th 2007 3:38AM

Yes.

Rubang B (NDF - Heart) @ Sep 28th 2007 11:40PM

Well since I'd trust GameDaily's mathemagical guesstimations over MicroSoft's "shipped" numbers, I'll believe it!

Ska Oreo @ Sep 28th 2007 11:46PM

DAMNNNN!!!!

AgentESPIO7 @ Sep 29th 2007 12:01AM

Why do these estimates not surprise me?

jynxycat @ Sep 29th 2007 1:10AM

So, they just guessed ? Great -_-

Either way, if it's anything like Halo 2, sales will tank after this week.

Everyone who would buy Halo 3 already has, anyone left probably will never buy it. It's the same pattern the second game went through.

blooh (CDF - Ass Ring) @ Sep 29th 2007 1:26AM

still pretty damn good sales, lol

Stevie Dunbar @ Sep 29th 2007 1:39AM

Uh, no. Halo 2 did experience it's biggest sales on day one but they did not come to a stand still after the first week. By January 2005 Halo 2 sold 6.4 million units, 2 to 3 million more in the following years.

Ska Oreo @ Sep 29th 2007 1:53AM

and what's your point? This is good news for Bungie and Microsoft. congratulations.

SoulBlade @ Sep 29th 2007 1:57AM

it is pretty impressive - props.

Diskoboy @ Sep 29th 2007 2:01AM

I was one of the rare people that got the Limited Edition Tin whose discs didn't fall off the nub, and get scratched.

They must've moved a few consoles, too. The Pyramid of Halo 3 Edition 360's at Best Buy (about a week ago) was down to a small pile of about 5, when I went tonight.

Handy Manny @ Sep 29th 2007 4:34AM

I dont care about picking holes, in the stats;

ALL I KNOW is that I'm 64,634 of the 187,000 Legendary Editions.

Run a Post on the count Joysiq, see how many of your readers have the Legendary Edition

And I know Halo will reach far from regular buyers, heres why. My Brother not the biggest gamer, he saw me play Halo 3 on day one, He went to go pick him self up an Elite and a copy of Halo. He saw the cut-scenes from the legendary disc and his sold. Same thing with my cousin. Pro model, Limited Edition at Day-Two. So where the count on that? Wish Microsoft put that out there.

Christopher7xii @ Sep 29th 2007 7:48AM

Note to hate the hype, but I wonder if they're counting returns on scratched versions for non-scratched as multiple sales? I know at my BB we had tons of people coming in to trade it out for a non-scratched version.

Also, last I checked the Xbox360 had only sold like 11mil systems... If 2.5 mil bought it, that means just under a quarter of every Xbox360 owner purchased Halo3? Anyone know how this takes into account rental chains (Gamefly, Blockbuster) purchasing the game?

Slaziman @ Sep 29th 2007 9:21AM

They can't count the returned scratched ones, since they based this of the total revenue Halo 3 made, and returned scratched disks don't make money

rdj75 @ Sep 29th 2007 9:26AM

@ Christopher7xii

If any game sells a million copies over a few years, thats considered excellent. Now I said that just to say this, you can spin that any which way you want but for halo3 to sell over 2million(regardless of how or to who) in the first 24hrs JUST IN THE US, is rediculously amazing. Gamefly, blockbuster and who ever else buys and rents games all buy Madden, Final Fantasy, GTA, Zelda and they don't have those kind of sales on day one on one console(all great games I might add). Some people love it, some people hate it and some people may not even know what halo is but when I turn on my xbox360, I know there will be at least half a million people playing halo3 at any given moment, and that my friend sounds like success to me.

Christopher7xii @ Sep 29th 2007 1:23PM

I'm sorry, I meant no offense by my comments. It was an actual question that I had. Because our computers at BB , when you return something it processes it as another sale. You just return the first one for store credit, then purchase another copy - that's the technical side of it. So I was wondering if the numbers they counted came from either
A) Counting the missing stock from the total stock at start of day, or
B) Checked sales to see how many units were rang up as a "sale".
Because, as Sony has proven with their counting units shipped as sold (because technically, the store purchased them so they are sold...), that every company counts their numbers differently - and obviously every one of them wants to try to skew the numbers positively if possible. Being able to claim you had the greatest opening day revenue of any entertainment event in the history of the US is quite a feat.

I'm not trying to deny Halo's success. Trust me, I've been playing it and I see the numbers too, usually upwards to 700,000 users on at a time this week. I just have a genuine curiosity of these things.

WiNG @ Sep 29th 2007 9:49AM

Wow that's pretty impressive. I mean that's like 1/3 of the WOW players but all on one day.

jopojelly @ Sep 29th 2007 10:19AM

Hmph, you guys are still wrong about it being the largest day in entertainment.

Burritoclock @ Sep 29th 2007 12:01PM

meaning... what? That you have some secret knowledge of the "real" biggest media event? Because I call your bluff.

Ihya @ Sep 29th 2007 1:47PM

Well measuring it by money then yes it is, but measuring it as an event in consumers psyche then no it isn't. Those Halorz are expensive experiences a pop so fewer people have experienced it, in comparison to either Harry Potter or Spiderman 3...

Burritoclock @ Sep 29th 2007 3:06PM

While all that may be true, they are referring to the money. The three day sales record is a record of money. Spiderman's or Titanics etc. records are measured in money. You don't ever here a movies weekend discussed as 5 million people saw Spiderman 3 over 3 days, you hear that it made 150 million or whatever. So semantically if you hate halo because hating popular things is cool then yes you can argue about it, but it misses the point which is that a VIDEO GAME made more money in 24 hours then any movie or book in the history of earth, which is a big deal no matter how you slice it.

Rubang B (NDF - Heart) @ Sep 30th 2007 5:38AM

Actually people do keep track of the number of tickets sold by a movie, which is how you can see which movies were more popular. If you go by money alone, the record gets broken every few years due to inflation.

baby sea tuna @ Oct 1st 2007 8:39AM

It's still okay to hate Spider-Man 3 though, right?

jopojelly @ Oct 2nd 2007 7:19AM

I was refering to Harry Potter book 7, which sold 11 mil first day at about 35 a pop, but I think Joystiq people don't concider books as entertainment.

Abortimus Prime @ Sep 29th 2007 11:36AM

Some shameless marketing coordinator is taking notes right now.

RemzVkru @ Sep 29th 2007 12:08PM

I wonder how many of those people are actually pleased with the game!

blooh (CDF - Ass Ring) @ Sep 29th 2007 12:53AM

probably most of em

the real question is how many 360's will rrod this week. I just keep mine turned off at least 12 hours a day and it's been fine for almost 2 years now. my 1st one rrod'd after i left it on for a week, shortly after launch. this is my 2nd, it's been great

Bloo @ Sep 29th 2007 5:34AM

I finished it tonight. While I thought the first two were average or slightly above, I thought this one was amazingly good. Unlimited budget, time, and not having to meet a certain date did wonders for this title!

DaMan09 @ Sep 29th 2007 3:19PM

Wouldn't it be funny if they sold double that amount?

Mr Khan @ Sep 29th 2007 3:20PM

1. Does that beat Halo 2?

2. For lifetime sales, people have to recall 2 things, being that the 360 is only about 1/2 of what Xbox was when Halo 2 released, but the 360 will live a lot longer from this point than Xbox did from late 2004 (basically, Halo 2 sold what it did in 1 year before the platform was killed, but it started with 2x the audience to sell to)

Tukulito-Zakayama @ Sep 29th 2007 3:25PM

Do you really like Halo 3 that much people, hmm i dont dont but i expected more, maybe im asking too much....

Eddie @ Sep 29th 2007 4:10PM

It comes down to the fact that Halo sold more copies than PS3s. That's effin fantastic. Microsoft marketing machine FTW!!

blooh (CDF - Ass Ring) @ Sep 29th 2007 6:03PM

lol, nice

i got my copy of halo for free from toysrus, so they might wanna subtract 1 from their tallies

Spitkicker @ Sep 30th 2007 1:14AM

@handy manny

Damn I'm number 204,810 on the Legendary Edition...but wait you said there are only 187,000...how can that be?

Bandobras @ Sep 30th 2007 4:12AM

Eek. And MS cant afford to craft non-broken $400 consoles?

GWolf @ Sep 30th 2007 2:50PM

That is a lot of scratch, profit wise. Lets hope the lesson takes hold for game developers that if take your time and put out good content the rewards are much greater than if you just try to meet deadlines.
Just finished Halo and it was worth my $60 particularly when I consider some of the other titles I spent the same amount on.