This is insane!

[Balldog]

Microsoft Sees $100 Million First Day for 'Halo 2'

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - First-day sales of Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT - news) new video game "Halo 2" will reach $100 million, a senior Microsoft games executive said on Tuesday.

"I'm calling a $100 million day on 'Halo' today," Peter Moore, a corporate vice president in Microsoft's games division, said at a Harris Nesbitt investment conference in New York.

The game, in which a super-soldier called "Master Chief" must save the earth from aliens, went on sale around the world on Tuesday, with thousands of stores opening their doors to eager customers just after midnight last night.

In addition to 1.5 million pre-sold units, Moore said one retailer sold 8,500 units in the first 11 minutes of sales, while another sold 200,000 units by daybreak Tuesday.

Analysts expect "Halo 2" to sell a total of about 10 million units, with some projecting up to half of those sales coming in November. The original "Halo" sold 5 million units and remains the best seller on the Xbox (news - web sites) to date. (Additional reporting by Franklin Paul in New York)

[TargetPractice6]

Hmm, does that count preorder cash that has been accumulating for months now?

[CHEMICAL SOLDIER]

Originally Posted by TargetPractice6

Hmm, does that count preorder cash that has been accumulating for months now?

It probably just is a rough estimate but damn! That's alot of units sold.

[mckerney]

Originally Posted by TargetPractice6

Hmm, does that count preorder cash that has been accumulating for months now?

Profits would typically be realized when the product is shipped, so I'd assume so.

[DeToxRox]

GTA made over 200 million from all reports I heard.

[Lathum]

i wonder when the movie will come out?

[bbor]

Dang.....

[sterlingice]

I'm trying to figure out how they're going to sell 10M copies when the installed base of the X-Box isn't 10M last I checked.

SI

[The_herd]

GTA3 sold 8 million copies. I think Vice City sold around 3 million in the first month, not sure on final numbers. I didn't see any numbers on San Andreas.

[Deattribution]

Originally Posted by The_herd

GTA3 sold 8 million copies. I think Vice City sold around 3 million in the first month, not sure on final numbers. I didn't see any numbers on San Andreas.

Final numbers for Vice City was around 12 million.... expected numbers for San Andreas are 15 million, and from the looks of it, should meet that number.

[The_herd]

Quite impressive.

Microsoft raises estimated first-day Halo 2 sales to $125 million-plus
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer quotes Microsoft's Peter Moore as saying the game shipped 2.38 million units in a single day.

Yesterday, Microsoft's corporate vice president of retail sales and marketing Peter Moore made one of the bigger boasts in game-industry history. "I'm calling a $100 million day on Halo [2] today," he said at Harris Nesbitt Playtime 2004 Investor Conference in New York City, according to Reuters.

Click Here.

Today, it seems that Moore actually low-balled Halo 2's opening-day sales. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is reporting that Microsoft now claims to have sold 2.38 million units of game in the US and Canada. If confirmed, that would mean the company's one-day take would exceed $125 million--exceeding even the highest-grossing opening weekend for a holiday film.

However, Microsoft's claims may be hard to independently confirm. David Riley, senior manager of the NPD Group, which currently holds a monopoly on nationwide game-sales data, said his company has had difficulty tracking single-day sales. However, reps for game retailer GameStop told the Post-Intelligencer that they sold over 500,000 of Halo 2 in its 1,726 American stores--a record for the company. If GameStop's main rival, EB Games, saw similar figures--not to mention other game-selling outlets like Best Buy--Microsoft's claims could be well within the realm of plausibility indeed.

By Tor Thorsen -- GameSpot
POSTED: 11/10/04 05:28 PM PST

[SackAttack]

I say this not as a slam on Halo 2 - which is a great game - but more as a slam on the metrics of comparison being used:

Big. Effin'. Deal.

$100 million in sales = ~2 million units sold through (the more $55 CE's sold, the lower that number)

$100 million in movie tickets sold = 10 million+ tickets sold.

It's not even a comparison worth making. "Yay, our game sold $100 million in the first day, and the biggest blockbusters do that in three days!" Yep. And your average blockbuster sees between 1,500 and 2,000 screens, with usually 4-7 showings in a day. 400 folks per showing (I'm guessing on the size of your average theater room, but this sounds reasonable), assuming they all sell out, at 7 showings per day, means each screen is capable of processing 2,800 folks. Multiply that by the low end, 1,500 screens, and that's 4,200,000 folks who'll see a movie on opening day under those circumstances, for a total of approximately $42,000,000 in ticket sales. So, yeah, the movie generates half the revenue, but reaches double the population.

But the video game is more successful, right?

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by sterlingice

I'm trying to figure out how they're going to sell 10M copies when the installed base of the X-Box isn't 10M last I checked.

SI

First of all, it's Xbox, not X-Box. Get it right.

Second of all, Halo 2 will be a system-seller, the way the first one was. You've got a console that's now half of what it cost originally, and folks who were holding out for a price drop, many of them were also waiting on Halo 2. Now that you've got both the drop down to $150 (including NCAA 2005 and Top Spin), as well as Halo 2 on the market *and* Live-compatible, you're going to see a surge in Xbox market share domestically. Abroad's another matter, but I don't think MS will have any problems meeting a target of 10 million sell-throughs domestically.

[Blackadar]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

I say this not as a slam on Halo 2 - which is a great game - but more as a slam on the metrics of comparison being used:

Big. Effin'. Deal.

$100 million in sales = ~2 million units sold through (the more $55 CE's sold, the lower that number)

$100 million in movie tickets sold = 10 million+ tickets sold.

It's not even a comparison worth making. "Yay, our game sold $100 million in the first day, and the biggest blockbusters do that in three days!" Yep. And your average blockbuster sees between 1,500 and 2,000 screens, with usually 4-7 showings in a day. 400 folks per showing (I'm guessing on the size of your average theater room, but this sounds reasonable), assuming they all sell out, at 7 showings per day, means each screen is capable of processing 2,800 folks. Multiply that by the low end, 1,500 screens, and that's 4,200,000 folks who'll see a movie on opening day under those circumstances, for a total of approximately $42,000,000 in ticket sales. So, yeah, the movie generates half the revenue, but reaches double the population.

But the video game is more successful, right?

Depends on your measurement. People, no. Money, yes.