Halo 5 ‘smashes record with biggest Halo launch in history’, says Microsoft

Microsoft has said that the launch of Halo 5: Guardians is the biggest in the franchise’s history.

Seeing as the game has the smallest UK launch sales for any main numbered entry in the series to date, however, how has the game achieved this?

One week after launching worldwide, Halo 5: Guardians has made history as the biggest Halo launch with more than $400m in global sales of Halo 5: Guardians games and hardware, pushing the franchise to over $5bn lifetime,” it said.

Presumably the inclusion of hardware (through bundles?) is the key factor here. No actual sales numbers for the game have been revealed.

It does add however that Halo 5 is the fastest-selling Xbox One exclusive game to-date. It was also the most played game on Xbox Live at launch with players so far logging 21m hours of gameplay, 12m of which were in the campaign mode.

Its launch broadcast has also grabbed the Guinness World Record for the most watched ever, with 330k unique viewers and 5.5m total views.

The success of Halo 5: Guardians is a testament to the innovative work from the entire team at 343 Industries to bring this instalment to Xbox One and the incredible community of fans who have come to love the story, characters and gameplay central to the franchise,” Xbox boss Phil Spencer said.

The game represents all the possibilities of Xbox One and has earned its place as the anchor title in the greatest holiday games line-up in Xbox history.”