Halo 3 Nets $170M Launch Day, Surpasses Halo 2

The numbers for Bungie's North American Halo 3 launch yesterday are in, making the iconic shooter's $170 million in day-one revenues the highest-grossing release in entertainment history, according to Microsoft. The title's U.S. revenues handily surpass the $125 million of the Halo 2 launch. Though comparing movie and game revenues can be tricky, as seen in the Shack's own feature article on the subject, the title does reclaim the entertainment launch revenue throne for video games. At the time of its release, Halo 2 was also the highest grossing entertainment event, but was since surpassed by last summer's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and again by this summer's Spider-Man 3, with an opening weekend of $151 million. Though Microsoft didn't say how many copies of the game were sold to retailers in the first 24 hours of launch, the 1.7 million preorders made Halo 3 the fastest pre-selling game as well. In comparison, Halo 2's $125 million launch moved 2.4 million copies of the title within 24 hours of its release. It's possible Halo 3 actually shipped a comparable or even lesser number of copies than Halo 2, given the $10 premium on both the standard and limited editions of the game for this console generation, in addition to Halo 3's outrageously priced $129.99 Legendary package.