Halo 4 claims more than US$224m in global sales in first 24 hours

13 Nov 2012

Halo 4 is on track to reach US$300m in global sales in its first week, eclipsing box-office records set by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 and The Avengers.

The launch of Halo 4 brings lifetime sales of the Halo franchise to beyond US$3.38bn.

Halo 4 also shattered the record for the largest number of players in the history of the the franchise, with 4m players recorded in the first five days.

Users also spent a total of 31.4m hours playing Halo 4, pushing the number of gameplay hours across the Halo franchise to beyond 5bn hours.

“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.”

It will be an interesting week on the games front. The latest game in the Call of Duty franchise Black Ops II went on sale at midnight and it will be interesting to see how well that particular game will do in its first 24 hours.

Last year, Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 crossed the US$1bn threshold in sales in just 16 days.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com