Halo 3 chalks up £17m at UK retail

Halo 3 Pumped a staggering 17 million into UK retail in its first week on sale.

The game made up 68 per cent of all Xbox 360 titles sold, pushing the format to its highest ever software sales week.

And it wasn’t only games that benefitted – Xbox 360 hardware also enjoyed a major spike. Sales more than doubled from the previous week, leaving Xbox 360 shifting more units than Wii for the first time in 26 weeks.

Halo 3 is now the second fastest-selling game ever after Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and was purchased by one-in-three Xbox 360 owners in its first week. Predecessor Halo 2 was bought by one-in-six Xbox owners back in 2004.

The game lived up to Microsoft’s billing of ‘The Biggest Entertainment Launch of All Time’ in the US last Tuesday, taking $170 million on its first day on sale in the giant territory.