NPD has released its report on official gaming sales data for October of 2015 and there were some rather interesting info about the effect the popularity of Halo 5: Guardians had on Microsoft’s Xbox One sales. We already know that the game is already the best selling game of October, despite the fact that it’s only on one console. Despite it only being on the Xbox One, those sales number were not all that surprising for those close to the series. The game series has a huge following and this is one of the reasons Microsoft expected Halo 5 to be a console seller.
The fact that the game wasn’t really a console seller at all is what is a surprising aspect of the report. Microsoft was able to beat out the PS4 in consoles sold in October, something that happened for just the second time this year. While the report doesn’t give out specific console sales numbers, Crave reports the agency says console sales for Xbox One were up 81 percent over last year in October. A quick calculation by Twitter user ZhugeEX shows that the company sold 305,000 consoles in October.
Compare this to 2007 when Halo 3 was released on the Xbox 360. NPD reports from back then show that console sold somewhere in the neighborhood of 527,000 and 550,000 consoles. When Halo: Reach was released in 2010 it helped boost Xbox 360 console sales to 483, 989. In 2012, Halo 4 was released and Microsoft sold 1.26 million units. That means Halo 5 has actually been the least impressive console mover for Microsoft since at least the original was released.