500 Million Halo Games, Halo 3 Documentary

Gamespot reports on some interesting information for Halo fans. Bungie has created a seven minute documentary about the Halo 3 Trailer run at E3 this year. The short piece allows fans to see the trailer from different angles, and provides insight into its creation. They've also released word that there have been 500 million Halo 2 games played since the game's release. From the article: "This is just the latest of several impressive accolades the game has achieved. In just its first few months in retail, the game sold 6.4 million copies worldwide and logged 91 million cumulative hours on Xbox Live. According to NPD, the game has sold more than 5.1 million copies in the US as of April 2006, accounting for almost $253 million in sales domestically."

M$ vs Nintendo

[strider2k]

Halo 2 sold 6.4 million copies. On the other hand, Nintendo has several different titles selling at least 1 million. Usually, quality is better than quantity but in this case I think Nintendo has the upper hand still.

Please note that Nintendo makes quantity "Quality" games so this isn't really a fair comparison. If it was Random Port or Sequel VS Halo 2 then it would clearly be Halo 2 being the winner of quantity vs quality.

Person years

[WalterGR]

Let's see... 91,000,000 hours / 8 hours in a day / 5 days in a week / 50 weeks in a year = 45,500 person years.

That's utterly... amazing.

In comparison, David A. Wheeler's paper Estimating Linux's Size [dwheeler.com] approximates the work on Linux so far to be about 4,500 man years. (He uses the COCOMO model [wikipedia.org].)

That reference was off the top of my head - I think it was mentioned on /. before. Didn't have much luck finding other interesting estimates...

Re:500 million games played, 6.4 mil copies sold..

[Hott of the World]

This would be newsworthy if Bungie made a dollar for each game played.

But they don't. But hey, lets throw a party, based on some stupid "games played" rubric. Next party will be celebrating "500 trillion braincells killed" by the people who've played halo games.

Re:Orchestra, Chorus, I am amazed.

[spoco2]

> Halo 3 production these days doesn't seem any different from a big budget Hollywood production.

I agree, and that's exactly what's wrong with today's games...

Oh what a ridiculous thing to say. Just because a game has fantastic production values, does not make it terrible... in fact it can help a great deal. I was just playing Hitman - Blood Money the other day and it's music, environments, voice acting etc. are all supurb and only enhance the feel and realism of the game.

Half Life 2... another example (I've been using these games a bit lately in examples!).

There are still small games with limited graphic and sound flair that are fun, but 'Great looking, great sounding' does not equal 'crap game'. Bringing in a bit of Hollywood can help games, sure it can hinder if looks and mainstream appeal is all that's included, but lush scores, good acting and well directed scenes are all plusses in my book.

Re:Person years

[Osty]

Probably could have cured cancer with that much time/effort, but oh well Halo is more fun.

This is obviously in jest, but it's annoying when people (especially the media) use comparisons like that. Sure, that's 500,000 person years "wasted" on Halo, but spread that over 6.4 million people and you get an average of right around 19.5 person days per person (based on the 50 weeks * 5 days per week calculation), or 156 hours (assuming 8 hours per day). That's certainly reasonable for a multiplayer game like Halo 2. I spent ~90 hours just on single-player Oblivion.

Surely one person could cure cancer given 500,000 years to work on it, but getting 6.4million people to cure cancer in 19.5 work days is not going to happen.

Halo

[Cocopjojo]

Yeah... I mean, why would a company want to hype a game that has already sold millions upon millions of copies? I mean... It's just stupid. Halo 2 was a let down? Tell that to X-Box Live. The oldest argument is that of Halo vs. CS and Unreal Tournament. But the numbers show the truth, guys. CS, UT, and all the others didn't generate the most profit ever on their opening day. When I say "ever," I mean, in entertainment history. Ever. I'll concede that CS and others may require more skill to play than Halo, but we can see where it got those games. Does that mean that the less skills a game requires the better? Of course not. It just means that there's a balance; one that allows new players to pick up a game and have fun and yet allows experienced players to be really, really skillful. It always amuses me to hear people trash the Halo franchise. The guys have revolutionized the video game industry. If you don't agree, again, look at X-Box Live and talk to the millions of folks who had never been into video games before Halo. As for the documentary, yes, they were saying, "Our game will be beautiful." And they've got a fan base of millions that want nothing other than to hear those words said. I can't blame anyone for not liking the game. It's not for everyone. But, like any cult following, its fan base utterly adores the game. I won't lie, the trailer brought a tear to my eye, as it did for many other fans. It may not have showcased gameplay, but for those of us who care, it said an enormous amount about the feel of the game, the storyline and the game engine. You just have to care enough to look into it. If all you care about is "immediately showing gameplay," then you don't know anything about how to present the newest installment in a multi-million dollar franchise. They showed what they showed for a reason; and guess what? They've got the money in their pockets and the millions upon millions of fans to back up one simple thought: Bungie knows what the freak they're doing.

Re:Orchestra, Chorus, I am amazed.

[scot4875]

Can you point out where in the GP post that he called games with fantastic production values 'terrible'? Or where he claimed that "great looking, great sounding" equals 'crap game'?

I can't put words in GP's mouth, but my understanding was that he believes that the problem with games today is that they *need* these ridiclous Hollywood-like budgets.

--Jeremy