Halo Facts
Some interesting Halo Facts:
- Halo and Halo 2 have sold more than 14.8 million copies worldwide (Xbox and PC versions). By the end of the year, more than £500 million would have been spent on the franchise.
- American gamers have already reserved more than one million copies of Halo 3.
- In May, Microsoft gave gamers a sneak peek at Halo 3 with a multiplayer beta test included with its Crackdown title. It attracted more than 820,000 people to participate from 25 different countries, who spent a whopping 12 million hours playing it online. That is the equivalent of 1,400 years of continuous play by a single person.
- Xbox Live has seven million members, 80 per cent of whom have played Halo 2 online. In fact, 300,000 gamers still log on to play each day.
- Master Chief is the first gaming character to be enshrined in wax by Madame Tussauds and will be seen at the London attraction. The 7ft 2in figure weighs 275lbs and was created using 1,000lbs of clay. It took 10 studio artists 892 man-hours to complete, including 687 hours for sculpting, 168 hours for moulding and 37 hours for painting.
- Halo 3 will be released in 37 countries next week as far afield as Slovakia, Chile and India. It will be translated into 17 languages.
- There is more audio in Halo 3 than in 20 movies combined, including 39,000 lines of dialogue, 13,000 sound effects and six hours of music.
- The franchise has won 235 awards in the USA alone.
- Development on the new game started in 2004, and has taken 120 full-time employees – double the number that made Halo 2. They have invested one million hours in the project.
- The Bungie Studios team consumed more than 20,000lbs of pizza, 24,000 gallons of drink and more than half a ton of bananas during those three years.
- Halo’s fan base is known as Halo Nation and is made up of gamers young and old. Some have even had tattoos based on the game.
- There are more than 130,000 pieces of video on YouTube devoted to Halo.
- Action figures, soundtracks, novels, toys and costumes are just some of the products released with Halo branding. The licensed merchandise has made three times as much as that related to Harry Potter.
- Academy Award-winning director, screenwriter and producer Peter Jackson is a fan and had been plotting a movie based on Master Chief’s exploits. He is now working on an unrelated “interactive entertainment experience” exclusively for the Xbox 360.
- Only Bungie know for sure whether Master Chief will live or die, but the Halo universe will live on in new game Halo Wars, due out next year.