Halo 4 has arrived and it made a little money into the bargain.

Microsoft has just released the sales figures for the global launch of Halo 4 on November 6th. In just 24 hours, the first person shooting blockbuster scored a massive $220 million dollars.

For context, that’s more than The Avengers – the biggest motion picture of the year – made in its entire opening weekend (around $207 million) and marks Halo 4 as one of the biggest entertainment releases of all time.


And this is just the beginning, analysts are suggesting that the game could breach the $300 million mark in its first week, with the pre Christmas shopping days still to come. The franchise itself has now earned over $3.38 billion and players have logged a frankly insane 31.4 million hours in game in less than a week. That’s almost 4000 years in game time!

“We’re thrilled that Halo 4 has emerged as the biggest U.S. entertainment launch of the year,” said Phil Spencer, corporate vice president of Microsoft Studios. “Thanks to the millions of fans worldwide who helped make this another record-breaking launch for the Halo franchise, Halo 4is kicking off a strong holiday season and has become the must-have blockbuster experience of the year.”

“Consumer demand and excitement for Halo 4is even greater than we anticipated,” said Tony Bartel, GameStop president. “Day-one sales of Halo 4make it the biggest ‘Halo’ launch in GameStop history and the biggest game launch on any platform so far this year in our stores.”

The cynical among us can’t help but see this news as a way to draw some attention away from the release of Call of Duty Black Ops II, which makes its debut today. And while Halo’s figures are certainly impressive (particularly as a single platform release) , they pale in comparison to the haul by the original Black Ops – which sold 5.6 million copies in its first day for a total gross of $360 million.

With both games now out in the wilderness, its up to players to vote with their wallets to see which will win the year. Why not get some help with that by checking out our reviews for Halo 4 and Call of Duty Black Ops II.

Halo 4 is out now on Xbox 360.