Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Worldwide sales of Halo 3 exceeded $US300 million during its first week, but that wasn't enough to sustain Microsoft's initial claim that it was the biggest entertainment launch ever.
While Halo 3 set an opening day record of $US170 million in US sales, putting it ahead of Spider-Man 3 and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the game's first-week revenue was well behind Spider-Man 3's $US382 million worldwide gross for the opening weekend alone.
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.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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