With the launch of the latest game in the Halo series happening just a week ago, its time to look back and see what happened. Halo 4 garnered great success, having $220 million in global sales in the first 24 hrs after launch. This record breaking success puts them at the top of the US Box Office leaderboard putting them above the likes of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 and The Avengers Assemble. It will be interesting to see today if Call of Duty: Black Ops II will take the crown away from Halo 4, or if Halo 4 will stick it at the top for the rest of the year.
Halo 4, compared to the success of other Halo games in the series, has proven itself to be worthy of a title in the series. In the first 5 days from launch, over 4 million players got online to play the game, spending a total of 31.4 million hours playing Halo 4. That addition of 31.4 million hours puts the Halo franchise over 5 billion hours played.
“We’re thrilled that Halo 4 has emerged as the biggest U.S. entertainment launch of the year,” said Phil Spencer, 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.” -Phil Spencer, VP of Microsoft Studios
Not only is there excitement around the financial success of Halo 4, but the actual launch of the game was quite the extravaganza around the world as well. There were more than 10,000 retail stores in over 40 different countries worldwide that held a midnight launch event, celebrating the return of protagonist John-117, Master Chief himself. Microsoft also had some of their own launch day events, their biggest being in the European country of Liechtenstein. Microsoft transformed Liechtenstein into a replica of the Halo universe, marking the first time a brand has taken over an entire country for an entertainment launch. For details of all the launch day madness, Microsoft has released a video documenting some of the bigger events, which I have posted below:
