Gamers have spent 21 million hours playing new ‘Halo’

Microsoft states that Halo 5: Guardians has raked in $400 million worldwide, counting both game and hardware-bundled sales, though specific unit sale numbers have not been released. Following the launch of Halo 4, many are skeptical if the next game from 343 Industries, which is Halo 5: Guardians, will have something new to the series that fans haven’t seen before.

Apart from this financial windfall, the fifth “Halo” was also the most played of any game on Xbox One, as well as in the Xbox Live. Surprisingly, one of the most popular aspects of the game seem to be the Halo 5: Guardians REQ packs – the in-game card packs that offer players weapons, vehicles, and boosts they can use in multiplayer modes. 7 million multiplayer matches have been played, with more than 45 million REQ packs acquired. Halo 5 has also earned the Guinness World Record for the most-watched video game launch broadcast with over 330,000 streams on the evenings’s broadcast and 5.5 million total views across the week. Alongside the latest release, excitement for the Halo World Championships is building, with the crowdfunded prize pool reaching a total of over $1.5 million, meaning that players from all over the world have everything to compete for. Things look good for the tale of Master Chief and Spartan Locke after the first week of sales, though Microsoft’s announcement is couched with a healthy amount of PR spin.

Fans around the world have discovered the pure entertainment of what The Verge calls “an absolute masterclass in how to craft a first-person shooter” and now the highest rated Xbox One exclusive, first-person shooter game of 2015, according to Metacritic.

The game has earned positive reviews to kick off the success and the sheer volume of fans tuning in is staggering and a testament to the quality of the “Halo” franchise.

GameSpot recently spoke with 343 design director Kevin Franklin about Halo 5’s microtransactions, who stressed that they are entirely optional.

Halo 5: Guardians is now available on Xbox One. So, really, which is the better game? Presumably the other two million hours was spent in menus or on Custom Games or something.

Have you picked up Halo 5: Guardians yet?

Qualification for the global tournament begins in December, with the finals taking place in March of 2016.