Well done, 343 Industries, well done. It seems like all the effort put into Halo 5: Guardians has paid off, as Microsoft is reporting an impressive sales revenue of more than $400 million just one week after launch in what it claims to be the “biggest Halo launch in history.”
Halo 5 was launched globally on October 27, and the number is for global sales of “games and hardware”. According to Microsoft, the game has pushed the lifetime value of the whole franchise to $5 billion. To put it into perspective, 343 Industries’ previous new Halo entry, Halo 4, made around $330 million in the first week.
Apart from financial statistics, Halo 5 also manage to grab some impressive player stats, including the highest week one attach rate among Microsoft’s first-party games on Xbox One, 21 million hours of total gameplay to date, 12 million of which is in the campaign mode. 7 million multiplayer matches have been played, with more than 45 million REQ packs acquired.
Microsoft pulls no stop in flaunting the popularity of Halo 5 both with players and critics, citing reviews from The Verge and Metacritic, as well as the game’s overall attractiveness on media channels, having been streamed for 3 millions of hours on Twitch, and even claiming a Guinness World Record for most watched video game launch broadcast with “Halo 5: Live.”
A mention was also given to the next Halo World Championship which will begin in December this year and extend into March 2016. The competition features professional players as young as 13 years old, and spans continents including the U.S., Canada, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia and New Zealand. The current prize pool is now $1.5 million and increasing.
Halo 5: Guardians seems to have been a huge success for Microsoft, the Xbox One, and 343 Industries, and we have little to say but to congratulate the developers (who must be popping champagne bottles by now) on doing a great job, and hope the momentum will continue with even more great Xbox exclusives from Microsoft.
As a quick reminder, the next Xbox exclusive, Rise of the Tomb Raider, which looks set to be another phenomenal experience, is right around the corner coming out on November 10, so Xbox users will be busy for yet a while longer.
