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Technology Lifestyle Official: Halo 3 grosses $US300 million in first week
Technology Lifestyle Official: Halo 3 grosses $US300 million in first week | Official: Halo 3 grosses $US300 million in first week |
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| by Stephen Withers | |
| Friday, 05 October 2007 | |
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Whether it makes sense to compare game sales revenue with cinema box office receipts is moot. Apart from anything else, there's roughly a 10:1 difference in the unit price, which means Halo 3 just isn't in there in terms of bums on seats. (For those of a western hemisphere persuasion, we're talking about buttocks, not down-and-outs.) Time on seat may be a different matter - 2.7 million players racked up an impressive 40 million hours of Halo 3 time on Xbox Live during that first week. Make an allowance for solo play by these people, and it is quite possible that the audience spent as much or more time playing Halo 3 as they did watching Spider-Man 3 during the week following the debut of each product. While Microsoft chose to focus on revenue rather than unit sales, don't let it be said that the company is only interested in money. "Halo is truly a cultural phenomenon, and the launch of Halo 3 is an important milestone for Xbox 360 and for video games as entertainment and as an art form,” said Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft. "Halo 3 embodies our vision for the future of entertainment, where some of the world's greatest creative minds will deliver a new generation of interactive storytelling." Rumours are circulating that Microsoft is set to hive off Bungie, which it acquired in 2000. Bungie started out as a Mac games developer, and a return to independence would allow it to once again produce titles for platforms other than the Xbox. But anyone suggesting this means we will see Halo for Mac needs their head examined. Master Chief has become too closely identified with Xbox for Microsoft to give up the rights to the Halo franchise.
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