Halo 2 passes five million

Microsoft has released a swathe of new figures related to Bungie\'s Xbox opus, Halo 2, revealing that the title has now sold over five million units worldwide and become the most popular game in the history of Xbox Live.

The five million unit mark has been surpassed in around three weeks, beating the global sales figure of the original Halo which took over two years to reach and bringing total sales of the franchise (including the PC version) to over 11 million units.

News of Halo 2\'s success comes as Microsoft revealed its sales projections for the Xbox console through to next June, with Bloomberg this week reporting that the company is hoping to ship 20 million units of the console by that point.

As well as the retail sales data, a plethora of Xbox Live statistics reveals that gamers have clocked up some 28 million hours playing Halo 2 online since its launch, making it more popular than any other game on the service, with over 900,000 players trying the game out online.

According to today\'s figures, gamers play the game online in sessions averaging around 91 minutes - which, Microsoft helpfully points out, is about the same length as most major film releases.

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Good for Microsoft.

it\'s kinda scary that 5 millions copy shiped and 20 millions people own a xbox. that 1/4 of the xboxer bought the game.

Halo3 sure will be "teh" MS hypemachine for the xbox2.. new screen on display shortly, stay tuned.

Actually, the last official figures of the Xbox installed userbase was 15.5 million back in June.  MS is aiming for 20 million by this coming June.

Rumor has it Bungie wants to hold off Halo 3 until the PS3 launch...

Another nail in M$\' coffin.

[Evi]

That\'s insane. They\'re making BANK off of a game that was WAY over-hyped. Not that it\'s bad, but WAAAAAAAAAAY over-hyped.

[§ôµÏG®ïñD]

You guys sure this game was over-hyped

[Evi]

After playing it...yes It still rocks, though.

Funny. In less than a month it sold more copies than HALO sold over nearly 4 years.

how many copies ended up in resellers, or on ebay?

Or still on store shelves. I\'m skeptical over these figures, too.

-Dan

How is this hard for you guys too believe?  

It had record breaking pre-sales plus it broke the 3 million sold mark within its\' first three days.  It\'s not that hard to grasp considering the original managed to sell 5.5 million.  Looks like everyone came back for the sequel.

Originally posted by mm
how many copies ended up in resellers, or on ebay?

I actually wish there was a way to find out about something like this.

I, personally, think the PS2\'s sale numbers are inflated due to poor hardware.

I didn\'t go back for the sequel. I just find the fact that one-third of Xbox owners have purchased the game to be unbelievable.

Unless it\'s a big game from Santa Claus, I just don\'t see that many users picking up the one game.

I could be wrong, I just think it\'d be too easy to inflate the figure.

-Dan

You do know that there were lines outside of stores for midnight releases don\'t you?  Biggest pre-seller in history, sold 2.38 million copies in its first day making 125 million in sales...FIRST DAY!  That figure is for North America only, the game was released world wide in the same week.

Also, if a third of Xbox owners bought Halo, which they did, then it isn\'t hard to believe that a majority of them came back for the second game.  Halo 2 is also a system seller type game so it probably brought in some new Xbox owners as well.

I just don\'t see how that\'s hard to grasp considering the original was such a popular game...

so, umm what was it\'s competiton on the xbox?