We knew Halo was popular, but is it so ubiquitous that even the omnipresent Call of Duty franchise won’t be able to keep up when Bungie’s last Halo title, Reach, comes available worldwide on September 1th? Apparently so.
This according to UK-based director of Xbox and Entertainment at Microsoft, Stephen McGill. He told Eurogamer at a launch event recently, they have “huge expectations” for Reach. Those expectations are so huge, that he expects it to outsell Activision’s biggest first-person shooter, Call of Duty: Black Ops.
“It’s going to be a really good fight and yes I do [believe it],” he said. “We have huge expectations.”
“More than 34 million people have bought [a Halo game] and those people are going to want to play Halo: Reach. We’re going to do incredibly well.
Halo was the stand-out title when we launched Xbox ten years ago,” he added. “It was the title that made FPS on consoles an accessible, fun, life-changing experience.”
The guy’s confident, and rightly so — forcefully, even. He’s the head of marketing for Xbox in the UK for crying out loud. But what do more reasonable people, those without “halos” hovering over their heads have to say about this? It’s not happening. Period.
Analyst Jesse Divnich of EEDAR was direct with his message: “Both titles will be mammoths, but claiming that Halo: Reach will outsell Call of Duty is aggressively optimistic. Simply put, it’s not happening.”
Pachter on the other hand appeared more hopeful if anything: It’ll be a “tossup” on the Xbox 360 he told Joystiq, but believes there’s “no chance” for Halo: Reach to surpass Black Ops overall.
“If Halo does outsell Black Ops, it will be a wonderful thing for the industry, since it will ensure that we have a really big holiday,” Pachter continued.
“I think Halo could penetrate 25 percent of the Xbox 360 installed base, putting it on par with the last four GTA games, but CoD has an addressable market that is 50 percent bigger, so it only needs 18 percent penetration.”
I think Halo: Reach has an extremely good chance of outselling it.
Oh you do?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HS7cMrIxghg&feature=player_embedded
yea, and GT5 will outsell both of them put together!
Can’t wait for it
yea, same!
i just hope kaz has fixed the GT racing wheel issues prolouge and the time demo had.
also please add clutch support!