Halo 4 is 'biggest game launch' this year, GameStop says

We knew Halo 4 was going to be popular, and oh look, it is. "Consumer demand and excitement for Halo 4 is even greater than we anticipated," GameStop president Tony Bartel said in a Microsoft press release. "Day-one sales of Halo 4 make it the biggest Halo launch in GameStop history and the biggest game launch on any platform so far this year in our stores."

(Of course, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 has yet to release in stores...)

According to Microsoft, sales of the game were more than $220 million globally from the first 24 hours of sales. At $60 a pop, that's more than 3 million copies, for those of you keeping track at home. Other numbers released by Microsoft show more than four million players were playing within the first five days, and accumulated more than 31.4 million hours of play.

To keep the momentum going, the second episode of Spartan Ops launched today, with this week's co-op missions focused on releasing the Infinity from the control of a mysterious artifact.