The Master Chief has returned in Halo: Campaign Evolved. So with the launch behind us, how is the game doing in terms of copies sold? Surely the iconic Halo franchise is kicking some ass? Well, maybe not.
There is a big caveat to keep in mind before we jump into the numbers: the game has only been available for 8 days at the time of writing, and 13 days if you include the early access period for Premium Edition buyers. Still, the vast majority of a game’s sales are made in the first few days, so we can get a pretty decent idea of how it’s doing.
According to Rhys Elliott at Alinea Analytics – who tend to be pretty damn close with their numbers – Halo: Campaign Evolved is currently sitting at around 1.56 million copies sold across all platforms, which seems…kind of low for a Halo game, really. I guess the series really doesn’t have the appeal it once did.
What caught me by surprise was just how little it has sold on PlayStation. I had assumed that Xbox’s most iconic figure would shift copies like crazy on novelty factor alone, but that is not the case. The data says just 351k on PlayStation, accounting for 29% of the total sales.
On Steam, it’s 212k, and Xbox takes the win with 900k, which is actually not too shabby considering it’s also on Game Pass.
For comparison, we just learned that the ports of the original Black Ops and Black Ops 2, which just released, sold a combined 11.2 million copies on PlayStation alone. I can’t imagine the Master Chief is pleased with this.
Halo: Campaign Evolved launched to pretty good critic reviews and the what is now the expected technical problems on PC. Since then, the player numbers on Steam have dropped steadily – which isn’t surprising since there’s no multiplayer – and the player reviews have remained “mixed”. The community seems to be souring on the remake as time goes on, too.
As for Halo Studios themselves, reporting has been mixed. There are claims that the team has nothing currently in development and that the planned remakes of Halo 2 and 3 might not be happening, despite it previously being said in May that they were already in active development before Halo: Campaign Evolved had even launched.
The future is looking messy, then, especially for Halo on PlayStation. When they announced Halo: Campaign Evolved for PlayStation, they also claimed all future Halo games would come to Sony’s machine. Xbox has been reversing its plans lately by bringing back Xbox exclusives, but also said they would honour promises, hence Campaign Evolved. But since they also promised Halo would be on PlayStation going forward, what’s the play going to be? And how will the low impact of Campaign Evolved on PlayStation effect those plans?