MEAN MACHINE: 'Halo 3' release could be bigger and badder than Potter, Spidey
You can make a case that 12:01 a.m. Tuesday marks another pivotal moment in American entertainment.
Millions of fans of the "Halo" video game series will pick up their copy of "Halo 3," the third installment of the sci-fi trilogy about man's battle against -- and alliances with -- alien species.
About 10,000 stores are to be open beyond normal hours in Michigan and around the country to sell it.
Many of the buyers -- people you know, not just stereotypical game-obsessed geeks -- will turn around and do nothing but play it for hours.
Some of them will play for days, both alone and with similarly devoted friends.
(Truant officers and human resource staffers: If absenteeism increases Tuesday, here's your reason.)
So, how big is this?
First, a thought on that pivotal moment:
"I'm no game guy," said Wayne State University professor and pop culture expert Jerry Herron. "But what we're seeing with 'Halo 3' is something fundamental about this country -- loving setting new standards and needing frontiers to exceed.
"We are desperately uninterested in the past, and we demolish anything that reminds us of what we used to be," Herron said. "Electronic gaming does what people used to do with Conestoga wagons -- gather up everything and start a new existence. It's very much frontier-like living in this new virtual world."
Second, the numbers:
At the end of what is to be a very long day, there's a very good chance that "Halo 3" will make history where it matters for a lot of folks -- beating sales revenue records for any type of media.
Ever.
"Halo 2" whomped movies, DVDs, books and music by selling $125 million on its first day a couple of years ago, and the hype and buzz and product affiliations that surround "Halo 3" virtually guarantee that it'll be a repeat performance.
The retail math is staggering. More than a million copies of the game already have been presold.
Up to 2.5 million eventually may sell on opening day, with different packages priced from $60 to $150.
But even if everyone buys the cheapest package, that's still $160 million in revenue in a single day.
That would top the $150 million take of "Spider-Man 3" over its first three days -- which in turn broke the record for the most movie money ever made in that period.
And it's proof that a popular game debut is right up there with opening day whoopee for blockbuster films like "Spider-Man" and "Pirates of the Caribbean," as well as the Harry Potter books.
The buyers and players are brothers, fathers, mothers and sisters -- the ordinary folks you live and work next to every day.
That's what makes this game so powerful -- its broad appeal.
For Frank O'Connor, content manager at Bungie, the Microsoft subsidiary that developed the game, it all comes down to the 7-Eleven plastic cup on his desk.
"I find that the most ultimate expression of consumer merchandising is having your own Slurpee," he said, gazing at the cup as he talked from the company's headquarters in Redmond, Wash.
But that's just one example.
The "Halo" name is being slapped on hundreds of products ranging from custom vehicles -- including a re-creation of the game's Jeep-like all-terrain vehicle, the Warthog -- to NASCAR.
This Sunday, a "Halo 3"-themed car -- No. 40, driven by David Stremme -- is to compete in the Dover 400 race in Delaware. The game and retailer Target are sponsoring the car.
There's even a British condom bearing the trademark. But, O'Connor says, "for me," the Slurpee is "the most exciting one."
If his tone is a bit bemused, he can be forgiven.
His team of 120 full-timers and innumerable part-timers has been laboring for three years to produce this sequel, and fan appetite for anything related to the game has been rabid.
" 'Halo' is one of my all-time favorite series for video games. I got 'Halo' on the first day it was released, same for 2 and of course 3!" said John Kamichitis, 16, of Macomb Township.
And he's only one of hundreds of people we heard from when we asked readers to submit their questions for the developers.
"We've been very good at insulating ourselves from that pressure," O'Connor said. "For some people it's amusing, for some people it's a little frightening, but for many it's exciting."
One nice side effect of being Microsoft's leading franchise -- and the one that has single-handedly sold more Xbox game consoles than any other -- is that "Halo" got the royal treatment this time around.
With a huge crew working on it, they managed to include everything they wanted to, including frills that O'Connor was sure would get scrapped when real-life deadlines loomed.
The ability to make, edit and share in-game movies? Check.
The ability to play through the single-player story but with three other friends online? Check.
A flexible map editor for multiplayer games that lets players set their own rules and tweak the geography where they shoot up their friends? Check.
Those features are virtually unheard of in console games, and frankly the combination even is fairly rare in PC games, where increased processing power typically means more goodies for players.
"Everything that we wanted in the game is in there," O'Connor said.
In return, Bungie is hoping for the same thing as its parent company: that the new "Halo" will sell a small mountain of the Xbox 360 consoles needed to run the game rated M for mature audiences because of violence.
There's even a special-edition "Halo 3" console that is to hit the market at the same time as the game.
There also are to be "Halo" controllers, "Halo" headsets, a "Halo" edition of Microsoft's Zune music player, "Halo" faceplates and bags for existing 360s, and so on.
"Most people who played 'Halo 2' on Xbox don't own a 360," O'Connor said.
So he and the team have their fingers crossed, especially as people consider gifts for the holidays.
"Hopefully ours is one of the ones they consider," he said.
Already, sales of the 360 console, the only one to feature the game, jumped by almost 50% in August.
"Halo 3" is advertised as the end of the "Halo" story -- but fans don't need to worry that it's the end of games set in the "Halo" universe.
First up are downloads for players to get online via Xbox Live, which could include additional maps for multiplayer matches and other extensions of the game.
Then there's that project, as yet unnamed, that the team is working on with "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson.
After that, O'Connor said, they haven't announced their next project.
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Maybe I'm being unrealistic, or this is a joke. Harry potter 1 sold 107 million copies, halo and halo 2 sold 14 million in total.
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