Can Halo 3 upset Halo 2 for the most gross sales in a single day on any piece of electronic media in history? Halo 2 currently holds the record from when its 2.38 million units sold totaled over $125 million during the 24 hours of November 9th, 2004. On September 25th, 2007, Halo 3 is gunning for the top, but can it be done? Let's see what the numbers say.
In case you're curious, opening day video game sales far surpass opening days for Hollywood films. The top-grossing opening day for a film is currently that of Spiderman 3 at $60 million. To get close to Halo 2's opening day you'd have to compare the opening weekend of Spiderman 3 at $151 million. Most video game opening days are quite tame in comparison to Halo 2.
Here's the problem: the install base of Microsoft's Xbox 360 stands at 8.9 million units sold worldwide compared to the 20 million Xboxen that were in homes as of November 2004. That's less than half, and the most significant problem Microsoft has to overcome.
Preorders are another good metric to examine, and Halo 3 is lacking there too: 1 million preorders compared to 1.5 million for Halo 2. However, Halo 3 does have one factor in its favor in the race for making some sweet mula with Uncle Rico: retail price. Halo 2 launched at $49.99 for the standard version and $54.99 for the collector's edition. Halo 3's cheapest version will sell for $5 more at $59.99, limited editions for $69.99, an legendary editions will graciously pad the numbers with a retail price of $129.99. Soak that one in. For ever person purchasing a legendary edition of Halo 3 its as if they're buying 2.17 units of the regular edition (from a gross sales standpoint).
Furthermore, I think Halo 3 will have a higher attach rate than Halo 2. During the last quarter of 2004 Halo 2 showed an attach rate of 30%. That means of everyone with an Xbox, 30% had purchased Halo 2 between November 9th and December 31st 2004, or about 6.3 million units. That doesn't represent a launch day figure, but it's good for reference. Because of the hardcore nature of Xbox 360 gamers (due largely to the expense of current-gen consoles) I think Halo 3 will enjoy more Xbox 360 owners purchasing it on launch day than Halo 2. It's my perception that Xbox 360s generally have an older install base than the original Xbox. This means that Xbox 360 gamers are more likely to control their own funds and therefore more likely to purchase Halo 3 immediately instead of waiting for the holiday season.
Now let's play with numbers. If you make some simple assumptions and divide the total sales by units sold you'll find the average purchase price of a copy of Halo 2 on launch day was about $52.52, implying that the ratio of standard editions sold to collector's editions sold was approximately equal, and even leans slightly towards more collector's editions sold. For simplicity, let's assume the distribution was split 50/50.
Next, let's find the launch day attach rate for Halo 2 and look at preorders. Dividing the install base by the number of units sold yields a launch day attach rate of about 12% for Halo 2. With 1.5 million preorders that means 7.5% of the install base pre-ordered and 4.5% bought without a pre-order. The existing 1 million preorders for Halo 3 means that over 11% of the Xbox 360 install base has already preordered Halo 3. That's almost exactly 1.5 times the percentage of install base that preordered Halo 2. In a slightly more stretched assumption, I'll assume that the 4.5% figure of launch day sales without a preorder is scaled appropriately by 1.5.
Finally, let's smartly apply these numbers and assumptions to the Halo 3 launch, throw in a dash of speculation, and serve it up with a hint of black magic. Prediction: a significantly larger percentage of install base will purchase Halo 3 on launch day than did Halo 2. Speculation: preordering causes more expensive editions of Halo 3 to be sold than otherwise would on launch day.
Combining 11% and (4.5% x 1.5) I get about 18%. Factor in the people who will preorder between now and launch day, and the Halo 3 preorders over 1 million that I haven't counted for simplicity's sake, and I say about 19% of the install base will purchase Halo 3 on launch day. That equates to about 1.7 million units sold, the figure used for calculation from here on.
What is 1.7 million units sold in dollars? If we assume an even 50/50 split between the standard edition and both other special editions then that yields $51 million in sales from the standard editions. With the 50% left for limited and legendary editions I'll grab at straws and predict an even 25/25 split. That yields $30 million in sales of limited editions and $55 million in sales of the legendary editions. The sum total: $136 million. No, I didn't fudge the numbers to come out that close with Halo 3 ahead. I honestly didn't know until I summed the final totals.
There's my prediction: 1.7 million units sold for gross sales of $136 million and a new record for sales of electronic media in a single day. I'm either right or wrong, and if I'm right nobody will remember, but so go the perils of internet blogging. What say you?
That's a scientific and
That's a scientific and brute force way to look at the numbers.
Although it's a small percentage, I guess you could factor in the number of people that will be buying 360's and H3 all at once. When H2 launched, the XBOX had penetrated the market. The 360 is still new to a lot of gamers. I've got 4 friends that have just bought XBOX 360's for H3. I know two more that are going to make the move in the next few weeks. There could be some H3 users coming out of the woodworks - guys that don't game often and haven't gotten a 360 yet.
i think halo 3 will sell
i think halo 3 will sell about 1.8 million.
Very good analysis. You
Very good analysis. You know, MS pays someone to do exactly what you've just done. They are banking on info like this (literally).
I'm going to try to do my
I'm going to try to do my part, I should be able to have enough for a Legendary edition, assuming there's any left for pre-order, if not I'll get Limited :).
DJ
I have only 1 problem with
I have only 1 problem with this calculation. Latest numbers show that the 360 was actually sold over 10 million tiems already. So I thik Halo 3 will be clearly ahead of Halo 2.
Gamers(tm) wrote in their latest issue that gamestop has already 4 million preorders - how can that be?
@cov The NPD group, an
@cov
The NPD group, an American market research firm, contributed the 8.9 million number to this article on GameDaily Biz on the 12th of this month. That's the best info I can find. Where is your 10 million number from?
@rapture
That's a good point. Don't really know how to factor that into my calculations, but it definitely is a factor. Perhaps one could estimate the install base will grow by 5-10% simply because of H3? But will it happen quickly enough to contribute to launch day software sales?
Xbox360 has sold 10.4
Xbox360 has sold 10.4 million units as of January 7th, 2007.
http://www.appscout.com/2007/01/live_from_ces_bill_gates_keyno.php
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/08/1632209
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/01/07/ces-the-xbox-360-to-get-iptv-in-07/
I can only imagine the 360 has sold a bunch more in the past 9 months. Looks like you need to jack your numbers way up.
WOOOT
WOOOT
Gamepro had this to
Gamepro had this to say:
http://www.gamepro.com/news.cfm?article_id=134888&lid=VideoGameNews&pos=2
Halo 3's hype is so insane;
Halo 3's hype is so insane; I've never seen anything like it. Honestly, I've always found Halo to be over-rated, although I do love it.
I can't imagine what will happen on launch day. It's scary.
from the Joystiq link Mintz
from the Joystiq link Mintz posted:
"Bill Gates and Robbie Bach are taking the stage at the annual CES keynote, eager to share everything they have in store for us in '07. As leaked, Microsoft is touting 10.4 million Xbox 360 systems shipped to date..."
There's been a lot of ambiguity about whether MS has shipped or sold 10 million. Judging by the mountains of Xbox 360s that were at BestBuy when I originally read that story, I think "shipped" may have been the right answer.
Either way, I don't care how many they've sold. I used the best info I had available.
I'm pretty sure your 1
I'm pretty sure your 1 million figure for pre-orders is way low. Where did you get it? the only thing I can think of is that you got it from a press release microsoft had several weeks (month?) ago announcing it. But that release specifically mentioned that halo3 was 'well ahead' of where halo2 was for the same time period before it's release. Pre-orders can be made right up until monday, so I think that number can only go up. Also this is the first I've heard of halo2 having 1.5M pre-orders. I thought it was much lower. Oh well, I'll trust you on that.
My guess is that day-of sales are going to about equal the pre-order sales, so at least 2.3 million copies. The number of Legendary editions is capped somewhere around 1/2 a million and is pretty much guaranteed to be sold out day 1 --that's about $65 million right there but lets fudge it down a little to be safe and say $62 million. that leaves 1.8M copies for the collectors and standard editions. at a wild guess, lets say that splits out to 1.2M for standard and 0.6M for collectors. That's about $72M and $42M. All together that adds up to around $176M before taxes and stuff, give or take a $1M here or there. Not a bad chunk of change.
Also from a link I
Also from a link I posted:
"Regarding Xbox 360: 10.4 million consoles sold, and they're half a million units ahead of expectation..."
Many people use "shipped" synonymously with "sold."
Question, are the npd
Question, are the npd numbers for the number of 360 consoles worldwide or northAmerica only? it might make a big difference...
I think your calculations
I think your calculations are good. However, as far as 1st day sales go, you need to factor in that Europe and other areas don't get Halo 3 until the 26th September!!!
Mintz wrote: Many people use
Many people use "shipped" synonymously with "sold."
Yes, and without supporting information it's difficult to determine which is correct.
If I were MS, I would
If I were MS, I would consider every console shipped as a sold console.
I'm not as excited for 3 as
I'm not as excited for 3 as i was 2. They've made me bitter.
Umm quick note about all
Umm quick note about all this "sold" / "shipped" percentages and what not.
To be fare, Microsoft could have sold / shipped 30 million (exageration) units of the 360, but I can think of numerous people that have gotten new consoles once the Elite came out. So you might have duplicate owners, meaning that there are more than one console per household.
clarke78 wrote:So you might
But surely of those owners, only a very tiny percentage would actually buy a second copy of H3. So, I don't think the new HDMI-enabled 360's or higher capacity hdd's will impact H3's sales figures if the owners already have first-gen 360's.
currently playing: Shadowrun, Call of Duty 4 MP beta
currently supporting: Ron Paul
Wow, only 11.6 million
Wow, only 11.6 million consoles sold? Why the doldrums from Jan-now?
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=28866
Who thought of this factor:
Who thought of this factor: the leak of H3 games now available before launch. How many hundreds/thousands of people will be spending their dollars before Sept 25th?
I'm sure MS would just lump
I'm sure MS would just lump those hundreds (if the number is even that high) with the first-day sales. Or I'm sure they would handle it the same way they handle advanced-screenings of movies (however that's handled).
I predict that I will play
I predict that I will play this game for 72 hours this weekend.
Ugh, just go crawl into your
Ugh, just go crawl into your sofa and play for the love of God! Stop torturing me!
You like candy?
jayWHY's got his.
jayWHY's got his.
Interesting
Interesting prediction....however, you are incorrect...Halo 2 DOES NOT own the single day sales record for electronic media (for number of copies sold). That record belongs to World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade expansion with 24 hour sales of 2.4 million copies worldwide. Still looking forward to Halo 3, though.
Gross sales = $, not copies
Gross sales = $, not copies sold.
$170 million first day sales
$170 million first day sales for a new record
Congrats, CougRon. Your estimate of $176 million was almost dead nuts.
Un-Freakin'-Believable!
Un-Freakin'-Believable!
$8 movie ticket. $60 video
$8 movie ticket. $60 video game.
Why wouldn't a hit video game make more money than a hit movie? Video games are about 6 times the cost of a movie ticket.
Many more people will watch a poorly performing movie than play a hit video game. I think that's more important: REACH. After all, that's what Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo want - market penetration (millions and millions of people using their game systems).
Still, Microsoft has accomplished something here with Halo 3. They've made more money on launch day than any other game.
Entertainment history? I wonder if a NASCAR race at Talladega gets close to a single day entertainment record that Microsoft is proud of. I'm guessing that more money is spent in Talladega on race day than any video game launch. Hrmm. Factor in the advertising and one race at Talladega might make more money than all the video games from Microsoft Game Studios.
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currently playing: Halo 3, Shadowrun, Call of Duty 4 MP beta
currently supporting: Ron Paul - issues
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