On May 15, 2007 the information was published, that Halo 3 would be released on September 25 in North America and the 26th in Europe. Halo 3 marked the third in a very popular series for the Xbox 360 called ‘Halo’. According to the vice president of Microsoft’s interactive entertainment business, Halo 3’s release was much more than only a video game release, it was the biggest entertainment event of the year. He might just have been right as well.
The history of Halo 3 really starts with the release of the first game in the series ‘Halo: Combat Evolved’. In November, 2001, when Halo was first released, game consoles were somewhat of a joke for one person shooter games. Yes, some games existed, but there weren’t the popular communities that the PC games in the genre had.
That all changed with Halo, in which players could fight aliens on foot and in vehicles, in order to complete objectives, while trying to uncover the secret of the Halo. Halo pioneered limiting the amount of weapons a player could carry to two, which in turn, meant forcing the player to make strategic decisions.
Enthusiasts waited for the release of Halo 3 with baited breath. They awaited the continuation of the one-person, shoot-em-up combat format that had been prevalent in the two former parts of Halo. Microsoft calls it the ‘Golden Triangle of Halo’, which consists of gun-type weapons, grenades and others. In reality, this was not new to one-person, shoot-em-up games, as it had existed since the very first Doom and even the predecessor to that game, “Wolfenstein”.
So, with all of that history behind it, people were very excited about the Halo 3 release date. How popular and welcome was the game? Well, before its release, 3.1 million copies were sold in advance orders and retailers were sure that that was insufficient.
The game grossed $300 million in the United States in just its first week. Overall it has sold over nine million copies worldwide and was the best-selling video game in the USA in 2007. Even the critics loved it, ranking it the seventh highest on the all-time list of Xbox 360 games.
The Halo 3 release date, like the release date of many widely popular video games was almost like a national holiday like Christmas or Easter. It beggars the question of just what will happen with video games in the near future?
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