Microsoft said that the Halo 4 video game made “entertainment history” by selling more than $220 million worth in its first 24 hours.
The new chapter in the Halo series also eclipsed the biggest movie launch in history, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, in terms of U.S. opening day sales. (Of course, Microsoft doesn’t have the data to show whether its Xbox 360 blockbuster beat Harry Potter on a global basis).
Microsoft said the new Halo game was on track to sell more than $300 million in global sales in its first week. Overall, lifetime sales of the Halo franchise have surpassed $3.38 billion since the series first launched in 2001. Halo 4 had 4 million players in its first four days, spending 31.4 million hours playing the game and pushing total game play hours for the series past 5 billion hours.
“We’re thrilled that ‘Halo 4’ has emerged as the biggest U.S. entertainment launch of the year,” said Phil Spencer, the corporate vice president of Microsoft Studios. “Thanks to the millions of fans worldwide who helped make this another record-breaking launch for the ‘Halo’ franchise, ‘Halo 4’ is kicking off a strong holiday season and has become the must-have blockbuster experience of the year.”
Microsoft also said that the live-action digital film, Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn, has generated more than 46 million views to date, including 39 million views on Machinima.com’s YouTube channel.
“Consumer demand and excitement for ‘Halo 4’ is even greater than we anticipated,” said Tony Bartel, GameStop president. “Day-one sales of ‘Halo 4’ make it the biggest ‘Halo’ launch in GameStop history and the biggest game launch on any platform so far this year in our stores.”
The game launched on Nov. 6 with midnight openings at more than 10,000 stores in 40 countries.