If you'd have been forced back in January to guess what two of the biggest games of 2012 were going to be, no one would have called you an idiot if you'd said Halo 4 and Black Ops 2. Well, whaddya know? Both of them have been huge. Back Ops 2 has already generated $1 billion in worldwide revenue since its launch on November 13. Activision announced the news on Wednesday, stating that the game reached the milestone in just 15 days, outpacing last year's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, which needed 16 days to generate $1 billion. The company claims Black Ops 2 is off to a faster start than Hollywood juggernaut Avatar, which took 17 days to take $1 billion. On Thursday, NPD verified the scale of the launch, putting November sales numbers for the title at 7.5 million units in the US alone.
Halo 4 has now sold over 4 million copies according to Microsoft and NPD affirmed this on Thursday, stating that Halo 4 sold 3.2 million copies in the US for the November 6 to November 24 period. This has propelled the entire Halo franchise to sales of 50 million since its debut back in 2001 with Halo: Combat Evolved. The company announced the news on Thursday morning, reiterating that players have spent more than 5 billion hours playing Halo on Xbox Live. Microsoft has released eight Halo games to date: Halo: Combat Evolved (2001), Halo 2 (2004), Halo 3 (2007), Halo Wars (March 2009), Halo 3: ODST (September 2009), Halo: Reach (September 2010), Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary (2011), and Halo 4 (2012). In addition to revealing lifetime sales figures for the series, Microsoft also announced a new free-to-enter Halo 4 tournament. The "Halo 4 Infinity Challenge" begins December 17 and tasks players will competing on global leaderboards across the game's War Games and Spartan Ops modes for a chance to win prizes. Players can register for the Halo 4 Infinity Challenge today through the promotion's website. The tournament is powered by Virgin Gaming and its grand prize is a UNSC-themed V8-powered 2013 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor truck designed by 343 Industries. The winner of the Spartan Ops tournament will be awarded an appearance in a future Halo game.
Other Big Sales Numbers
Call of Duty and Halo aren't the only two games to see spectacular performance this year. As of November 19 total sales for Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition stood at 4,476,904. The game sold between 40,000 and 60,000 copies per week between October 29 and November 19, according to data provided by Mojang Studios to Gamasutra. Sales at that level mean the game generated between $800,000 and $1.2 million every week during the time. Though this may sound impressive, the game's sales performance is actually slowing down. Back in August, it was selling at a rate of 17,000 copies per day - driving $340,000 in revenue every 24 hours. After its launch on May 9, the game sold so quickly it became profitable after just one hour. The PC and Mac versions of the game have now sold a staggering 8.2 million copies.
Another hit on Xbox Live, though by no means at the same level, has been RedLynx's Trials Evolution. The game has now sold more than 1 million copies, and continues to be a strong performer much like its predecessor. Publisher Ubisoft announced that the second wave of DLC for the game will be released later this month. The Riders of Doom expansion follows October's Origin of Pain content, and will cost $5. The DLC adds 40 new tracks to the game, including a new environment inspired by the end of the world. A new vehicle--the Banshee--will also be up for grabs, as well as "hundreds" of new objects for the game's level editor.
On Thursday, Sony announced the best-selling PlayStation Network games for the month of November, revealing Telltale Games' The Walking Dead Episode 5: No Time Left to be the month's biggest hit. Rounding out the top five for PSN and PS3 full games were Assassin's Creed III, Sonic Adventure 2, Okami HD, and PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. All five episodes of The Walking Dead made it into Sony's top 20 for the month.
On Vita, Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified topped the PSN charts. The much-criticized game beat out the likes of Assassin's Creed III: Liberation, Persona 4 Golden, Ragnarok Odyssey, and need for Speed: Most Wanted to secure the top spot, presumably by virtue of its name and wishful thinking on Vita owners part.
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