On May 15, 2007 the news was out, that Halo 3 was due to be released on September 25 in North America and on the 26th in Europe. Halo 3 marked the third in a wildly popular series for the Xbox 360 called ‘Halo’. According to the vice president of Microsoft’s interactive entertainment business, Halo 3’s publication was much more than just a video game release, it was to be the biggest media event of the year. He may just have been right too.
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 something of a joke for one person shooter games. Sure, some games existed, but they didn’t have 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.
People waited for the Halo 3 release with baited breath. They awaited the continuation of the one-person, shoot-em-up combat format that had been dominant in the previous two versions of Halo. Microsoft calls it the ‘Golden Triangle of Halo’, which consists of gun-type weapons, grenades and others. In actuality, this was nothing new to one-person, shoot-em-up games, as it had existed since the very first Doom and even the precursor to that game, Wolfenstein.
So, with all of that previous history, people were full of excitement 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 thought that that was insufficient.
The game took over $300 million gross 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 liked it, putting it the seventh highest in the list of Xbox 360 all-time great 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?
If you like Halo 3 and are interested in learning more about it, why not visit Halo 3 Info on our web site called Halo 3 Insider Secrets This and other unique content ” articles are available with free reprint rights.