Fallout 3 ships 4.7 million in first week

Last week's launch of Bethesda Softworks' after-the-bomb role-playing game Fallout 3 was, appropriately enough, explosive. The publisher took a victory lap today by announcing some early statistics for the game. Bethesda said that it shipped roughly 4.7 million copies of Fallout 3 around the world last week. Sales of that massive stockpile surpassed the $300 million mark.

Both of those figures stack up reasonably well with last year's release of Halo 3. Microsoft's heavily hyped first-person shooter posted sales of $300 million in its first week on analyst-estimated shipments of 4.2 million. It's worth noting that Halo 3 was an Xbox 360 exclusive, whereas Fallout 3 is available on the 360, PlayStation 3, and PC, and the installed user bases of those platforms have increased significantly in the intervening year.

Fallout 3 was released on October 28 in North America and October 31 in Europe. It may receive another sales boost in the near future, given that Bethesda has planned a Japanese launch for the game on December 4.

For more on Fallout 3, check out GameSpot's review.