Halo 3 Breaks The Mould News

So, here are the numbers: $170 million in US sales alone for the first 24 hours. That beats Spider-Man 3's records in the cinemas, as well as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow's impressive performance in the book shops.

We all expected that Halo 3 was going to be big, but perhaps not quite this big, demonstrating again that games can hold their heads up high with the media and entertainment big-boys such as film, music and books. The uber-eager gamer should be credited for these impressive numbers as 1.7 million copies had been pre-ordered in the US before midnight on Tuesday, beating the previous record of pre-orders for a game set by - yep, you guessed it - Halo 2 (1.5 million pre-orders, 2.4 million copies all together and $125 million in sales during its first 24 hours). The Master Chief truly is supreme in his dominance.

"Halo 3 has become a pop-culture phenomenon," said Neil Thomson, Senior Regional Director, Entertainment and Devices Division, Microsoft UK. "Not only is Halo 3 setting sales records, it's also redefining entertainment. Within the first 24 hours alone, we've seen more than a million Xbox Live members worldwide come online to play Halo 3 - that makes September 25 the most active Xbox Live gaming day in history."

As always, Halo 3 multiplayer will be where much of the action takes place and will provide some all-new features such as four player co-op multiplayer, a multiplayer map editor called 'Forge' and the ability to watch and save films of your multiplayer scuffles. Can it wipe the floor with Gears of War's record for most weeks atop the Xbox Live charts? TVG says yes.