Halo 5: Guardians was the debut of Xbox's signature franchise on the Xbox One when it released last week, and its strong sales show that fans were more than ready for the Master Chief's arrival.
In the game's first week on sale, Microsoft is reporting combined game and hardware sales (the Halo 5: Guardians console bundle) have surpassed $400 million, making it the biggest launch of a Halo game to date. That pushes the franchise past the $5 billion mark in lifetime sales. It also became the best-selling digital game on the Xbox Live digital store ever in a game's opening week.
Microsoft is highlighting a number of other various statistics surrounding the game's launch as well. Halo 5 has the highest first-party game attach rate for the Xbox One to date, and in its first week, it was the number one game played on Xbox and the one played most on Xbox Live.
In fact, more than seven million multiplayer matches of the game have been played so far, with a combined total multiplayer playtime of nine million hours across both of the game's multiplayer modes. Players have opened more than 45 million REQ packs, which is how players obtain new items in Halo 5. More than 568 million cards have come out of those REQ packs, with the real-money proceeds from some of those packs contributing directly to the Halo World Championship prize pool, which is currently sitting at $1,500,000 and growing.
That's certainly all good news for Microsoft, which is going into this holiday season still firmly trailing Sony's PlayStation 4. Microsoft will need its strong first-party lineup to close the gap, and it sounds like Halo 5 will be a major player in helping the company do just that. You can read our full review of Halo 5 here.
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