Halo Reach sells 300k in UK on day one

MCV can reveal that 300,000 copies of Microsoft’s Halo Reach were sold in the game’s first 24 hours on sale in the UK.

This already puts Halo Reach at number ten in the all-time UK weekly sales league table, leaving it in prime position to climb the listings through to the weekend.

Lifetime UK sales for the Halo series stand at 3,674,840 units as of July 2010, representing a total return of 109,068,532. Worldwide Halo series sales stand at around 34m units.

Microsoft’s Phil Spencer has also confirmed that the game made $200m across the globe in its first day of release.

This is excellent news for the video games and interactive entertainment industry, demonstrating how games sales continue to increase despite difficult economic circumstances,” UKIE director general Michael Rawlinson stated.

With one in every three people classifying themselves as gamers, and with over half of UK households containing at least one video games console, the UK video games market is in great shape for the future.”

Any doubts about Halo Reach’s ability to outstrip the exceptional market performance of Halo 3 were hushed when just hours after hitting retail Halo Reach had already toppled Halo 3’s concurrent online user record on Xbox Live.

Critically it’s proving a smash, too, with a Metacritic average that puts most titles to shame.

To put all this in perspective, however, back in November 2009 Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sold 1.23m copies in its first 24 hours in the UK, with combined revenue from here and North America hitting $310m.

Taking into account the fact that MW2 sales were split across multiple formats, that still means that Halo Reach sold about half as many copies on Xbox 360 as Activision’s shooter achieved.