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Halo 2 Passes 1.5 Million Pre-Orders!
- Thread starter XboxGamers
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seismologist
Banned
This is the most hyped game in the history of gaming. Preorders have been going on for like 2 years now.
GTA:VC, Wind Waker, OoT, Mario 64, MGS2, FFVII, FFX, Mario Kart 64, Mortal Kombat 1, Sonic 2, WoW, DNF, Half Life 2, and EQ2 disagree with you. Not saying any one is more or less hyped than the others, but to quantitively say this is the most hyped game ever is kind of silly... :rolls:seismologist said:
lochnesssnowman
Member
GhaleonEB said:Please stop using the old box art.
Old art:
Final art:
The old art is better man. The black holds better against the background rather than the coloured in MC in the new box.
jarrod said:
Really? Now that gaming has become so much more mainstream, it seems that hype has the ability to reach far more people than it ever did before. You have people from all walks of life and all ages gearing up for games these days and the media coverage just seems so much more "bombastic".
pot. kettle. black.jedimike said:
Well, SMB3 DID get it's own movie..dark10x said:
But seriously, I think even though there are more gamers, today's mainstream gamers seem more segmented than before. It just seems like so may people are only buying one or two types of games while in the 8/16-bit days you had MANY more people buying lots of different varieties of games. Just my impression at least.
In that sense, EVERYONE who played video games was waiting for SMB3. Here is is basically the (admittedly vast) fanbase that played Halo 1.
yeah, because I am the ONLY one in this thread saying this.....Teddman said:
2M for the holidays (which many are agreeing with) and then 1M next year, and that's INCLUDING January to August where even the biggest holiday titles with legs only sell 40-60K per month.
sonycowboy
Member
borghe said:
sonycowboy said:I think we should draw a line in the sand.
Those that say it will anywhere near 4 million on one side + those that say it will sell less than 2 million on the other.
When the December NPD comes in, the winners get to throw tomatoes at the losers and choose the losers tags
NO number either of these games produce will surprise me, but 2 million is looking ridiculousl low at this point.
I dunno, definitions of "mainstream" vary. Looking at active lifetimes, NES is still the best selling console in America (though PS2 should be able to supplant it soonish)...people kind of forget the impact NES and Mario actually had in the 1980s and the diversified audience it enjoyed (from girls to grandparents). Mario 3 was a cultural phenomenon almost... Halo 2 doesn't realy approach that and it's target audience is far more narrow.dark10x said:
It's more acceptable to be a "gamer" today sure, but gaming hasn't really moved outside the hardcore audience Sega started cultivating, the same audience has only grown. PS1 & NES were truely diversified platforms, I'm not sure anything this generation is really the same (maybe GBA, but it's really more kid focused).
sonycowboy
Member
jarrod said:
The PSone sold ~40M units in the US. What did the NES do?
2004/06/30 100.29 million units (Japan: 20.77million/ USA: 39.91 million/ Europe: 39.61 million)
again, agreed.. I would seriously almost say that games like Sonic 2 and Mortal Kombat 1 & 2 were more "hyped" than Halo.. It took almost over an hour to get into the door to get Sonic 2 on release day at one of the local Babbages here.jarrod said:
SMB3 I missed (was a SMS man, not a NES man), but I do remember seeing it ALL over the place and obviously commercials for The Wizard like every five minutes on Nickelodeon with the same SMB3 shots.
MightyHedgehog
Member
Halo 2 ought to sell over 4 million (worldwide) before Xenon hits. And I think that's a sort of conservative number, really. The reason why this sucker's gonna do well, like the original game has so far, is the multiplayer. And now it's online with DLC.
seismologist
Banned
Also the preorder craze has grown since Wind Waker came out. Even Circuit City is taking Halo 2 preorders now. It's gone beyond the point of preorder to make sure you get the game. But now it's more like a business strategy where they put alot of pressure to get you to buy games that aren't even out yet.
borghe said:
Halo sold well over 1m last year, and has done what, nearly 600k this year?
Halo has sold over 3.5m in the US. I predict Halo 2 will move nearly that many this year. It is true that this does not sync well with typical sales patterns, but then Halo and Halo 2 are not typical games. Halo has had the longest legs of any console game out there (someone prove me wrong - I'd actually like to know if another one held on so long), and the fan base is huge and hard-core. You would think Zelda with its long legacy or GTA:VC with it's larger system install base and sales would have more pre-orders, but they didn't.
The vast majority of Halo players will buy Halo 2 right away. With 3.5m copies of Halo out there right now (and over 4m by EOY), I do not see any barrier to Halo 2 selling 3m in 2004.
Halo sold 80-100K DURING THE HOLIDAY SEASONS. Otherwise it usually sold around 50K or so.bheemer said:
And yes, the biggest holiday titles ARE like Halo 2. GTA:VC, MGS2, etc. Just because XBox owners have never had a game that sells 2M+ copies over the holiday season before doesn't mean it has never happened and there is no precidence.
jarrod said:
Remember, though, NES had no real competition. People may argue differently, but I still believe the N64 was real competition for the PSX and sold well in the US. So, during it's active lifespan, PSX approached NES (what WAS the PSX at in 2000?)...and that was with more competition.
seismologist
Banned
haha you guys are way too optimistic. How many Xboxes are sold in the US? Like 10 million? You really think 1/3 of all Xbox owners will buy Halo 2? I bet half the preorders are no-shows.
borghe said:
And? Dreamcast was launched with much fanfare and had a very strong start...but that didn't affect PSX, did it?
Genesis went on to become much more successful than DC, but I don't believe it had a really strong start (it seems that the DC's early days were stronger than what the Genesis first experienced).
PSX also launched just after what was thought to be major competition (but wasn't) and could have been viewed as just ANOTHER CD based console (as they were all the rage at the time). PSX overcame many odds...
MightyHedgehog
Member
Off topic a little, but responding to the previous post: Genesis (in the US) had barely managed to sell something like 2 million systems before SNES was released in '91...and then saw its sales surpassed in the US in as little as 5-8 months. It wasn't until '93 that the Genny had caught up to and started to outpace Nintendo's console. Or at least, from what I remember.
No, NES just had a dead market to start from scratch in. They did everything from the ground up really, making videogames appealing again for retail and consumers after the great crash. "No real competition" is looking at things very narrowly, NES wasn't burdened with a competitive market, they were faced with no market at all.dark10x said:
start? no.. as someone who bought a Genesis in 10/89 it most certainly didn't have a strong "start". But by summer/fall of 90 IIRC they started getting their heavy hitters out. Revenge of Shinobi, Columns, Golden Axe, PSII, Moonwalker (MJ was still huge back then), John Madden Football, etc. It was during this time that the Genesis severely eroded the NES' lifespan, however the system was still doing great, it just had lost a large part of the market that it had previously enjoyed all to itself.dark10x said:
I don't have numbers, but by fall of 1990 Genesis was THE hot thing. I still remember the original EA titles (Madden Football, Budokan, and Populous) completely selling out at most stores, not to mention the phenomenon of PSII and Golden Axe....MightyHedgehog said:
This I disagree with as well. While Nintendo did have to start from scratch, what killed the market wasn't a lack of interest in video games but the explosion and resultant implosion of video games. You make it sound as if the buying public is what killed the game industry. The truth is that there was so much crap out there (more copies of ET manufactured than actual 2600's existed) that the companies floundered and eventually folded. Atari died because no one could afford to make games for it anymore after so many busts.jarrod said:
Nintendo did have to start from scratch, but as history shows they didn't come in to a hesitant public. The public very much wanted video games and the continued success of arcades through 1984 shows that. Nintendo just knew that they would have to directly control the games coming out or else the 2600 debacle would happen all over again.
borghe said:
Nope. I don't have my spreadsheet handy - it's at home, I'll have my wife send it to me - but Halo sold over 300k last December alone and has averaged about 90k every month since.
And there is no precidence for legs that long that I know of. Halo sold 1.5m by early 2002 - and another 2 million since then. It has been in the general top 15 all-system monthly sales charts nearly every month since release, and it is still at $30 (and only dropped to that at this time last year). Find me a precident for that, please.
Also, I think all of this needs to be kept in the context of the system install base - a quarter of the PS2's and yet we are talking about sales that not many games have even on that system.
seismologist
Banned
Deku Tree said:
I actually had one of them tell me that because of the limit shipments
if I dont preorder Halo 2 I wont be able to get it until next year.
MightyHedgehog
Member
Yeah, and as someone who also bought the Genesis at launch, I know that it started off pretty shakily, AFAIR. In '90, it didn't seem all that hot to most people I knew as everyone was waiting for the SNES. After Madden '92 had been out a bit, though, and a lot of advertising later (in '92-93) the Genny was becoming 'cool.' Anyway, this is pointless because every generation has been so different from each other in key areas that comparing them too closely is far from an accurate way to gauge future events.
OG_Original Gamer
Member
Will it be in kiosk after release, that seems like the easiest way to move units after pre-orders are picked up. If I were MS, I would try to get stores like BestBuy, CircuitCity, Fry's and anyother major eletronics stores to display it on a HDTV.
What I will admit is that Nintendo was genius in convincing American video game publishers to start publishing again before the NES was a bonafide success. They did this by, believe it or not, introducing the Nintendo quality program. Not only did the Nintendo Seal of Approval give Nintendo absolute control over what was released for its system, it also allowed the publishers to release games without the incurred costs of actual manufacturing or distribution. They paid a flat rate to Nintendo and Nintendo handled all of it. Of course as history shows us eventually Nintendo used that for some less than scrupulous purposes, but that is besides the point.dark10x said:
TekunoRobby
Tag of Excellence
I read this in the Wall Street Journal earlier this morning, the newspaper not the website. Investors and business men alike are taking this VERY seriously. I think it's a great success for the industry at large not just for Microsoft.
MightyHedgehog
Member
According to articles and such, late '91 was a turning point for thanks in large part to the sports games emerging on the Gen and Sonic. However, it never seemed 'cool' and popular until around '92-93, IMO. And borghe, Sonic was released in '91.
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