Microsoft have made the announcement that Halo 5: Guardians had the “biggest launch in Halo history,” though their evidence to support this claim is a little misleading.
The company made the announce via Xbox Wire, and while sales of Halo 5 will have undoubtedly been strong, the statement made by Microsoft reveals that they are taking into account sales of both the game and the limited edition Halo 5 Xbox One console, meaning that the launch week sales of $400 million do not include sales of the game alone.
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It remains to be seen how well the game on its own stacks up to sales of previous entries in the series, though judging by this statement from Microsoft, it’s likely that it sold less than other games in the series. This news comes after it was revealed that it had sold the least of any main Halo game in UK sales chart history (via GameRevolution).
Here’s a portion of the statement from Microsoft:
“One week after launching worldwide, Halo 5: Guardians has made history as the biggest Halo launch and fastest-selling Xbox One exclusive game to-date, with more than $400 million in global sales of Halo 5: Guardians games and hardware, pushing the franchise to over $5 billion lifetime. With the highest week one attach rate for a Microsoft first party title on Xbox One, the game was the most played of any game on Xbox One, as well as the most played on Xbox Live.”
Though Halo 5 may not have been as record-breaking as Microsoft would lead us to believe, it’s still been an impressive launch for the company and has proven to be a system seller for the Xbox One. The Xbox Wire posts states that since launch, 21 million hours of total gameplay have been logged by players, with 12 million hours total for the game’s campaign and 9 million total for its multiplayer component.
