Will Halo Sales Again Rival Box Office Figures?

"It is among one of the entertainment cultural events of the year," Bach says of the game's Sept. 25 release.

It is the title gamers have been waiting three years for and the game that could jumpstart Microsoft's X-Box 360 gaming console, as the company fights for dominance against Sony's PlayStation and Nintendo's Wii. Nearly 2.5 million X-Box users still haven't traded up to the X-Box 360, according to Microsoft. The company hopes Halo 3 will get them to do so.

"Halo 3 is going to drive a ton of X-Box 360 sales as well as new x-Box Live memberships," says Shane Kim, vice president of Microsoft Game Studios.

The stakes are high for Microsoft, and the company says this is the critical event to juice X-Box 360 sales.

"It is content that drives the entire success or failure of the platform program over all," Kim says. "That is why we believe we have a significant competitive edge over Sony with a title like Halo 3 and other exclusive content."

Halo 3's secret weapon — linking to Microsoft's X-Box Live platform and its six million subscribers — allows dozens, even thousands of players to link up on the Internet and take each other on with Microsoft's gaming and computing future riding on every Halo click.

The chart below shows stock prices of some major gaming companies after before and after release dates of top-selling games. This is a small sample and many other variable could be in play, but for the 10 cases below, there seems to be a big shift from positive run up in the months leading up to release date to significant decline in the months that follow.

In fact, 70 percent of the time stocks have risen when looking at data from three months or one month prior to launch date compared to the actual launch date. One month after launch date, stocks are up 50 percent of the time. Three months after launch date, stocks are down 80 percent of the time.

Game	Company name	Launch date	3 month lead-in	1 month lead-in	1 month post launch	3 month post launch
Halo 2	MSFT	11/9/04	+9.5	+6.4	-8.5	-12.4
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City	TTWO	10/27/02	+45.7	-0.9	+15.4	-22.2
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories	TTWO	4/18/06	-2.0	+14.3	-17.4	-43.6
Gran Turismo 3	SNE	7/10/01	-19.3	-25.3	-11.8	-34.5
Madden 2007	ERTS	8/14/07	+3.6	+6.8	+6.2	NaN
Madden 2006	ERTS	8/14/06	+8.8	+8.0	+9.1	+19.5
Madden 2005	ERTS	8/12/05	+14.2	-1.3	-1.3	-0.8
Cartoon Network / Gameboy	COOL	4/15/04	+46.3	+25.0	+36.7	-13.3
Dungeons & Dragons	ATAR	5/2/06	-7.8	+22.5	-18.4	-18.4
Guitar Hero	ATVI	4/3/07	+11.5	+17.0	+9.6	-1.4
Average change	+11.1	+7.3	+2.0	-14.1
Percent positive	70%	70%	50%	10%
Percent negative	30%	30%	50%	80%

© 2008 CNBC.com

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