Halo Reach rakes in $200 million on its first day

By Geoff Duncan September 16, 2010

Microsoft says Halo: Reach, the latest installment of its Halo scifi combat franchise, brought in some $200 million on its first day of sales, making it the strongest launch of any game—or movie—so far in 2010. Speaking on the sidelines of the Tokyo Game show, Microsoft Game Studios vice president told Reuters Microsoft is very pleased with response to Halo: Reach, and that customers’ strong response to the game indicates that that video game industry is still in a healthy state as it leans into the end-of-year holiday season.

First day sales figures for Halo: Reach include pre-orders, which historically inflate the debut figures for top-selling titles, making their first week of sales artificially strong compared to sustained sales. However, in comparison, Microsoft’s previous Halo installment, Halo 3, racked up $300 million in sales during its first week.

Overall, Microsoft has relied heavily on the Halo franchise to propel its Xbox gaming console, having sold nearly 34 million Halo games since the first title debuted on the original Xbox console nearly a decade ago, accounting for nearly $2 billion in sales. Microsoft has repeatedly referred to Halo as a “pop-culture phenomena,” but despite undeniable success on the Xbox platform, the company has not capitalized on the franchise outside of the gaming console market. Efforts to launch a Halo movie with Peter Jackson at the helm fizzled out, although the project did unexpectedly morph into the sci-fi Best Picture nominee District 9.

Microsoft is not skimping on the price tags for Halo: Reach, however: the game is available in three editions on sale for $60, $80, and $150 (Legendary Edition), and is also offering a special Xbox 360 console with the game for $400.

Update: 9/16/2010: Changed the price of the Legendary Edition from $250 to $150

Make sure you check out our Halo: Reach Review.

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Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

Gaming

Rebuild your own nostalgia with this detailed Xbox 360 toy set

xbox 360 mega building set replica

Although Microsoft is shutting down the Xbox 360 Store next year and definitely wants you to pick up its newest console for Starfield, it has still found a new way to appeal to the nostalgia of Xbox 360 players. It's doing so through the new Mega Showcase Microsoft Xbox 360 Collector Building Set, which will be available this October.

This set will be available starting on October 8 and will cost you $150 dollars; that said, you'll only be able to pick one up at Target. Mega makes Lego-like replica models of things for people to build, and this one is intricately designed to look like the launch version of Xbox 360. It's at 3:4 scale and made up of 1342 pieces. With it, players can build a version of the Xbox 360, a controller, and a case and disc for Halo 3. Even the packaging it comes in looks like the boxes Xbox 360 consoles came in at release.
Once built, this model will actually have working lights and a disc drive, as well as a hard drive and side shell panels that are removable. It obviously won't be able to play actual Xbox 360 games, but it still looks like a faithful recreation of Microsoft's classic game console. This is far from the first time we've seen video games and their consoles branch over into the work of buildable toys, as Nintendo patterned with Lego to create various Mario sets as well as a replica NES.
The Mega Showcase Microsoft Xbox 360 Collector Building Set releases exclusively at Target on October 8.

Gaming

The impending Xbox 360 Store closure makes me wary of Game Pass’ future

I'm an avid Xbox Game Pass user, often trying almost every game that comes to the service and closely following the games coming to and leaving the service each month. Following some recent announcements by Microsoft, though, I've been thinking a lot more about something else about Xbox Game Pass and Microsoft's current digital-focused Xbox storefronts and ecosystem: what happens when it all goes away?
Microsoft announced last week that it will shut down the Xbox 360 Store in July 2024. After that day, it will be impossible to buy games, movies, or TV shows digitally on the Xbox 360 store; it's just like what happened with the 3DS and Wii U eShops earlier this year. That announcement also came not long after Microsoft revealed it would replace Xbox Live Gold with Xbox Game Pass Core in September. With these changes, Microsoft is stamping out any support or focus its giving to the Xbox 360's era as a platform. As someone who grew up mostly playing Xbox 360, seeing these things I grew up with go away is saddening. It's also making me think about the day this will eventually happen to Xbox Game Pass or the store on the Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.

Frankly, I'm not as concerned that Microsoft is going to do it anytime soon. Microsoft has given no indication that it plans on abandoning Xbox Game Pass. It's a really successful subscription service heavily integrated into all of its current platforms, there are titles confirmed to launch day one on it into 2024 and beyond, and Xbox initiatives like Play Anywhere and Smart Delivery ensure that at least some version of most Xbox games are available on other platforms. While I expect it to be the primary part of Microsoft's gaming strategy over the next decade, as someone who mainly played Xbox 360 growing up and is now seeing its storefront and subscription service go away, I'm now thinking about what the end of the Game Pass era will look like.
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Gaming

Microsoft will shut down the Xbox 360 Store next year

An image of backward compatible Xbox 360 games.

Microsoft announced today that it plans to shut down the Xbox 360 in 2024, an extremely disappointing move that's bad for game preservation.

The Xbox 360 Store, also known as the Xbox Live Marketplace, has been present on Microsoft's second game console in some form ever since it launched in 2005. In recent years, storefront shut down for older systems have become more common. The 3DS and Wii U eShops went offline in March despite player anger, while Sony planned to shut down the PS3, PSP, and PS Vita storefronts in 2021 before reversing that decision because of the backlash. Regardless, the loss of any storefront is a dour move for the video game industry, as some games are exclusively available to them and will be lost forever when the store goes offline.