It’s no secret that video games make most of their money shortly after their release, but Halo 4 is taking that concept to the limit. Within 24 hours of its release, Halo 4 had earned two hundred and twenty million dollars. That’s the biggest launch of any Halo game to date, and, according to Microsoft, the “biggest entertainment launch of the year.” Halo 4’s first day sales grossed more than both The Avengers and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows did on their respective opening days. Now that’s impressive.
Over 4 million players have already played more than 31 million hours in just its first five days and analysts are saying that the game will likely make $300 million dollars in its first week. The Halo franchise has now earned over 3.3 billion dollars in its lifetime making it one of the most lucrative franchises of any genre or medium.
That being said, Halo is still lagging behind Call of Duty, which sold 6.5 million copies on day 1 when Modern Warfare 3 was released. Of course, Call of Duty has recently been dethroned by Minecraft in terms of units shipped, so a strange pecking order is starting to emerge; Si-fi shooters lose to military shooters which eventually lose to zombie-survival-adventure-Legos.
Source: IGN