Microsoft based its victory assumption on a $166 million estimate of Deathly Hallows day-one sales cited in The New York Times and elsewhere, but a Scholastic book rep told MarketWatch this figure wasn't official. The publisher says it sold 8.3 million copies of the book in its first 24 hours at retail, but won't disclose its revenues. MarketWatch got its estimated range of launch-day sales from the book's variety of retail prices, which spanned from $17.99 to the suggested retail price of $34.99.

Though it's kind of a silly issue, it's one of those things that sheds light on the bizarre world of video game fandom. Book readers couldn't care less if a publisher made tons of money on a recent novel, and Scholastic doesn't really have a reason to come out and declare itself champion of something like earning gobs of money on a product's launch day. Video game fans actually know the figure offhand, and are sometimes rewarded for this knowledge.