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By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 04/11/2015
Halo 5 is "the biggest Halo launch in history", Microsoft has trumpeted. But there are a few unanswered questions, chief among them: how many copies has it sold?
This afternoon Microsoft said Halo 5 was the fastest-selling Xbox One exclusive game to-date, with more than $400m in global sales of Halo 5 games and hardware a week after launch.
We're used to big publishers broadcasting how much money their games bring in soon after launch. Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops, for example, brought in $650m in five days. It took just three days for Grand Theft Auto 5 to cross the billion dollar mark.
But those figures relate to money made from the sale of the game only. Microsoft's $400m Halo 5 figure, unusually, includes sales of the game and hardware, so costly console bundles boost the revenue.
An interesting comparison is to Halo 3, which launched in 2007 on the Xbox 360. Bungie's shooter topped $300m in worldwide sales in its first week. So yes, Halo 5's $400m figure is bigger - but it includes hardware.
Meanwhile, Microsoft said Halo 5 has the highest week one attach rate for a Microsoft first-party title on Xbox One, and it was the most-played game on Xbox One, as well as the most played on Xbox Live. Halo 5 is also the best-selling digital game ever in the Xbox Store for an opening week.