Microsoft, Halo 3 Smash Sales Records

Hours before I personally rushed off to get Halo 3 from the local Best Buy (it was on my lunch hour), I posted a report asking just how important Halo 3 was for everyone's tech superpower, Microsoft. Although speculation was enough that day, this morning it's finally becoming clear exactly how critical the closing saga is for Redmond.

In just a day, Halo 3 smashed sales records by racking up $170 million dollars (USD) in sales, trumping the previous record as set by Spider-Man 3's debut (incidentally enough, Best Buy gave me and many first-day buyers a free copy of the Spider-Man 3 game). What it all means is that Halo 3, the game the Xbox 360 and all of its loyal, hardcore fans have been waiting for, is now the biggest entertainment release in history.

And you thought games were just for kids.

An unbelievable 1.7 million preorders were made for Halo 3, with players lining up in the dark, starry night to get their hands on Master Chief at 12am sharp. Bungie, the company behind the game, has detected 1.39 million players in the past 24 hours alone, and those would be solely players with Xbox Live functionality. (Source: theglobeandmail.com)

So, is it any good?

As someone pursuing graduate studies while working here at Infopackets, I must admit I haven't yet beat the bloody thing. However, I've invested enough time into the "Heroic" difficulty level to tell you it's a challenging game that simply expands and improves on a winning formula. There's nothing too revolutionary here, thus far, but would anyone have realistically tinkered with it? That'd be like switching out the exhaust on a brand new Ferrari. Dumb move.

Halo 3, which launched at midnight Tuesday morning in 37 countries under 17 individual languages, is available for $60, $70, and $140, depending on the version. (Source: pcworld.com)

As for the success of Halo 3, Canadian news center The Globe and Mail has proclaimed that "There's a new king of the entertainment world, and his name is Master Chief." My only question to that is -- was there ever any doubt?