Bungie.net will reboot tomorrow with new features enabled. TeamXbox has an interview with Bungie.net’s development lead, Chris Gossett, about the new features.

IGN has previewed one of Halo 3’s previously unrevealed multiplayer maps: Isolation.

Tyson “Ferrex” Green has put up part two of his three-part series on Forge; this one is on advanced features like inventories, budgets, and quotas. If you missed part one, read that first.

Midnight at The Hushed Casket wonders if Halo 3 can overturn Halo 2’s sales records.

Kikizo interviews Harter Ryan of Ensemble Studios about the secrecy surrounding Halo Wars’ early development.

A midnight London launch of Halo 3 won’t be permitted on Oxford Street, but will be… apparently just about everywhere else.

The Halo franchise has many critics, people who wonder why Master Chief and company has invaded the video game universe in such a successful way. Here are some facts that some of you may have never known. This will give us the ammunition needed to face the wave of ‘Doubters’ that gang up against the franchise we have grown to love.

The Numbers

· “Halo®” and “Halo 2” have sold more than 14.8 million copies worldwide (Xbox® and PC versions). It’s expected that by the end of the year fans will have spent more than $1 billion on the “Halo” franchise.

· The “Halo 2” release on Nov. 9, 2004, set entertainment history by generating $125 million in U.S. sales in its first 24 hours. The launch of “Halo 3” on Sept. 25, 2007, is expected to once again set entertainment sales records by selling more in the U.S. on day one than any movie in history (the current record is held by “Spider-Man 3” at $151 million) and selling more in its first week than any album.

· “Halo 3” is the most anticipated game in video game history, and pre-sell numbers showcase the excitement, reaching 1 million in the United States alone in late July, two months before the launch.

· More than 10,000 retail stores across the United States will be open at midnight on Sept. 25 to ensure that fans receive “Halo 3” hot off the shelves. Managers at workplaces worldwide expect a higher than usual number of absentees in the days following the launch.

The Xbox LIVE Numbers

· The “Halo 3” multiplayer beta, which ran for three weeks in May 2007, attracted more than 820,000 unique participants from 25 countries around the world and became the biggest console beta of all time.

· Participants in the multiplayer beta logged more than 12 million hours of online gameplay. That’s the equivalent of 1,400 years of continuous play by a single person. They downloaded more than 350 terabytes of data, equivalent to more than 82 million digital song downloads with an average size of 4 MB.

· Of the 7 million members on Xbox LIVE®, the largest social network on TV, more than 5.5 million have played “Halo 2.”

· Nearly three years after the release of “Halo 2,” more than 300,000 unique gamers continue to log on to Xbox LIVE every day to play it.

The Facts

· Master Chief, the hero character of the “Halo” franchise, is one of the most recognizable characters in video games. He recently joined heroes of television and film as the first videogame character to be immortalized in Madame Tussauds’ 250-year history.

· “Halo 3” will be released around the globe as follows:

• Sept. 25: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Hong Kong, India, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan and the United States
• Sept. 26: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom
• Sept. 27: Japan

· Owing to its worldwide popularity, “Halo 3” will be available in 17 languages: English, Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Danish, Finnish, French, Italian, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Slovak, Spanish (Iberian and Latin American), Swedish and Traditional Chinese.

· “Halo 3” has more audio than 20 feature films combined, including the following:

• 39,000 lines of dialogue
• 13,000 sound effects
• Music totaling six hours of continuous play

· The music of the “Halo” series has garnered numerous audio awards around the world, including the 2004 Console Game of the Year from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, the Game Developers Choice Awards and Rolling Stone magazine’s award for best game soundtrack.

· Inspiration for the environments in “Halo 3”came from a variety of sources, such as French cathedrals Chartres, Metz and Reims; a Wallace Stevens poem titled “The Snow Man”; and the sketches and watercolors of artist David Roberts.

· “Halo 3” development began in 2004, and the title took 120 full-time employees (double the number that developed “Halo 2”) and an army of contractors over 1 million person-hours to create. The Bungie Studios team spans a broad range of talent, including architects, engineers, journalists, artists and videographers.

· The Bungie Studios team consumed more than 20,000 pounds of pizza, 24,000 gallons of soda and more than a half ton of bananas during the three years it took to develop “Halo 3.”

The Partners

· The “Halo” franchise has spawned numerous licensed products such as action figures, soundtracks, graphic novels, collectible figurines, apparel, costumes and a comic book series. The licensed merchandise for “Halo” has brought in three times more revenue than all merchandise sold to date for the Harry Potter franchise.

· “The Official Halo 2 Guide: Strategy Evolved” had day-one sell-through of 270,000 copies, the second-best launch day for Random House Inc. next to Bill Clinton’s “My Life.”

· Bungie’s “Halo Graphic Novel” was one of Marvel Comic’s top-selling graphic novels in 2006 — amongst a field of “Amazing Spider-Man,” “X-Men” and a number of other Marvel properties.

· Two of the four “Halo” novels made the New York Times’ best-seller list, and are the top-selling video game novels of all time.

· Academy Award-winning director, screenwriter and producer Peter Jackson has partnered with Bungie Studios to extend the “Halo” franchise by co-writing, co-designing and co-producing an interactive entertainment experience exclusively for Xbox 360.

The Awards

The “Halo” franchise has received critical acclaim worldwide. “Halo,” “Halo 2” and “Halo 3” have received more than 235 awards from media and industry organizations in the United States alone.

Thanks goes to the Bungie PR team for this information.

Can Halo 3 upset Halo 2 for the most gross sales in a single day on any piece of electronic media in history? Halo 2 currently holds the record from when its 2.38 million units sold totaled over $125 million during the 24 hours of November 9th, 2004. On September 25th, 2007, Halo 3 is gunning for the top, but can it be done? Let’s see what the numbers say.

In case you’re curious, opening day video game sales far surpass opening days for Hollywood films. The top-grossing opening day for a film is currently that of Spiderman 3 at $60 million. To get close to Halo 2’s opening day you’d have to compare the opening weekend of Spiderman 3 at $151 million. Most video game opening days are quite tame in comparison to Halo 2.

Here’s the problem: the install base of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 stands at 8.9 million units sold worldwide compared to the 20 million Xboxen that were in homes as of November 2004. That’s less than half, and the most significant problem Microsoft has to overcome.

Preorders are another good metric to examine, and Halo 3 is lacking there too: 1 million preorders compared to 1.5 million for Halo 2. However, Halo 3 does have one factor in its favor in the race for making some sweet mula with Uncle Rico: retail price. Halo 2 launched at $49.99 for the standard version and $54.99 for the collector’s edition. Halo 3’s cheapest version will sell for $5 more at $59.99, limited editions for $69.99, an legendary editions will graciously pad the numbers with a retail price of $129.99. Soak that one in. For ever person purchasing a legendary edition of Halo 3 its as if they’re buying 2.17 units of the regular edition (from a gross sales standpoint).

Furthermore, I think Halo 3 will have a higher attach rate than Halo 2. During the last quarter of 2004 Halo 2 showed an attach rate of 30%. That means of everyone with an Xbox, 30% had purchased Halo 2 between November 9th and December 31st 2004, or about 6.3 million units. That doesn’t represent a launch day figure, but it’s good for reference. Because of the hardcore nature of Xbox 360 gamers (due largely to the expense of current-gen consoles) I think Halo 3 will enjoy more Xbox 360 owners purchasing it on launch day than Halo 2. It’s my perception that Xbox 360s generally have an older install base than the original Xbox. This means that Xbox 360 gamers are more likely to control their own funds and therefore more likely to purchase Halo 3 immediately instead of waiting for the holiday season.

Now let’s play with numbers. If you make some simple assumptions and divide the total sales by units sold you’ll find the average purchase price of a copy of Halo 2 on launch day was about $52.52, implying that the ratio of standard editions sold to collector’s editions sold was approximately equal, and even leans slightly towards more collector’s editions sold. For simplicity, let’s assume the distribution was split 50/50.

Next, let’s find the launch day attach rate for Halo 2 and look at preorders. Dividing the install base by the number of units sold yields a launch day attach rate of about 12% for Halo 2. With 1.5 million preorders that means 7.5% of the install base pre-ordered and 4.5% bought without a pre-order. The existing 1 million preorders for Halo 3 means that over 11% of the Xbox 360 install base has already preordered Halo 3. That’s almost exactly 1.5 times the percentage of install base that preordered Halo 2. In a slightly more stretched assumption, I’ll assume that the 4.5% figure of launch day sales without a preorder is scaled appropriately by 1.5.

Finally, let’s smartly apply these numbers and assumptions to the Halo 3 launch, throw in a dash of speculation, and serve it up with a hint of black magic. Prediction: a significantly larger percentage of install base will purchase Halo 3 on launch day than did Halo 2. Speculation: preordering causes more expensive editions of Halo 3 to be sold than otherwise would on launch day.

Combining 11% and (4.5% x 1.5) I get about 18%. Factor in the people who will preorder between now and launch day, and the Halo 3 preorders over 1 million that I haven’t counted for simplicity’s sake, and I say about 19% of the install base will purchase Halo 3 on launch day. That equates to about 1.7 million units sold, the figure used for calculation from here on.

What is 1.7 million units sold in dollars? If we assume an even 50/50 split between the standard edition and both other special editions then that yields $51 million in sales from the standard editions. With the 50% left for limited and legendary editions I’ll grab at straws and predict an even 25/25 split. That yields $30 million in sales of limited editions and $55 million in sales of the legendary editions. The sum total: $136 million. No, I didn’t fudge the numbers to come out that close with Halo 3 ahead. I honestly didn’t know until I summed the final totals.

There’s my prediction: 1.7 million units sold for gross sales of $136 million and a new record for sales of electronic media in a single day. I’m either right or wrong, and if I’m right nobody will remember, but so go the perils of internet blogging. What say you?