Microsoft  's gaming division could soon turn a profit, thanks to the smashing success of Halo 3. Redmond reports the franchise has made history as one of the biggest entertainment launches of all time, with more than $300 million in sales during its first week on store shelves.
Halo 3, the conclusion to the epic Halo trilogy, picks up where Halo 2 left off, answering questions about the fates of the protagonist Master Chief and his artificial intelligence sidekick Cortana as they struggle to save humankind from destruction at the hands of the alien coalition known as the Covenant.
"Halo is truly a cultural phenomenon, and the launch of Halo 3 is an important milestone for Xbox 360 and for video games as entertainment and as an art form," Gates said in a statement.
Breaking All the Records
Gates went on to say that Halo 3 embodies Microsoft's "vision for the future of entertainment," where some of the world's greatest creative minds will deliver a "new generation of interactive storytelling."
Halo 3 is staking its claim as the most popular Xbox Live game in history. Microsoft reports that more than 2.7 million gamers have played Halo 3 on Xbox Live in the first week. That accounts for about one-third of the seven million Xbox Live members worldwide.
In fact, within the first day of its launch, Halo 3 players worldwide racked up more than 3.6 million hours of online play, which increased more than eleven-fold to 40 million hours by the end of the first week. Also its first week, Halo 3 drove a record number of Xbox Live Gold Memberships as hundreds of thousands of new members gathered online to compete.
Selling More Consoles
"People that are familiar with the Halo franchise have already opted for the console they wanted to buy -- the Xbox 360 -- because you can only get this game for this console," said Yankee Group analyst Josh Martin, who added that the popular title bodes well for additional Xbox 360 console sales.
Record week-one sales come on the heels of the previously announced $170 million in sales in the U.S. within the first 24 hours of the game's release, which marked not only the biggest video game launch ever, but also the biggest entertainment launch in history.
The Xbox 360 title beat previous U.S. sales records set by blockbuster openings for entertainment events such as the release of "Spider-Man 3" and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." More than 1.7 million copies of Halo 3 were preordered in the United States, making it the fastest preselling game in history, surpassing the previous record-setting presales of Halo 2.
To date, more than 20 million copies of the games in the Halo trilogy have been sold worldwide.
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