Yep, the Master Chief's still got it. The released Pre-Order charts for the week of September 9 from VG Chartz reveal that Halo 3: ODST has over 1.2 million fans lining up and waiting for its release, thus far.

Almost a month after its release, Bungie Studio's Halo 3 has finally loosened its grip on the US sales charts, with Valve Corporation's Orange Box succeeding the widely successful game. For the week ending on October 13, The Orange Box (containing Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and Episode 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal) is the best seller on its first week of release.

For its opening week, The Orange Box's Xbox 360 version has sold 348,049 units and Halo 3, now on its third week, has sold 285,860 units. In third place is the popular The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for Nintendo DS handheld platform. In fourth is Final Fantasy Tactics: The Lion War for the PSP and in fifth is Wii Sports for the Wii.

It was only a matter of time for Halo 3 to lose the top spot, but it's unlikely the same could be said for its presence in Xbox Live, where it continues to dominate the charts after dethroning the previous champ, Gears of War.

Some recent info from the broadband solutions company Sandvine implies that the release of Halo 3 didn't help much with the popularity of the Xbox 360. According to their data, while there is an increase in peak bandwidth in Xbox Live traffic, the number of hosts remain the same.

The gathered data suggests that the game didn't pull in new gamers, it just made old gamers play a lot more. In turn, this suggests that the Halo 3 release didn't pull in as much sales in Xbox 360 consoles as was predicted.

When GigaOM asked for a comment, Sandvine replied that this is not a direct conclusion. They "do not track the number of consoles or whether the number of hosts are new or existing [ones]."

The data merely suggests that the increased traffic (of about 200% at peak times) can be "attributed to existing users" since there's no increase in the number of gamers. However, the Halo 3 data was also compared to the ones gathered from Gears of War, whose release caused a surge in both bandwidth and users in XBL.

Some theories were suggested to explain the bandwidth surge and the stagnant player base: (1) New 360 owners may still be playing the single-player campaign which means they don't go online and so don't contribute to the data numbers, (2) Halo 3 appealed to the fanbase of the earlier Halo games which explains why the playerbase remained the same.

Also, according to the latest data from VG Chartz, the latest hardware sales for the Xbox 360 only increased by 19% on the week of Halo 3's release but as they point out, the reasonable conclusion is that the "Halo 3 boost has already occurred."

This does not explain the small attendance rate in Xbox Live though. However, one of the best qualities that Halo 3 boasts is its long lasting playability factor so perhaps the real pull of the game will only manifest over time.

Game industry sales tracking site VG Chartz reports that the Nintendo Wii game console has hit total lifetime sales of 10.57 million in the period ending August 23rd, surpassing Microsoft's Xbox 360 to take first place in this generation's console war.

VG Chartz says that its figures come from samples drawn from consumers worldwide, and not retailers, meaning that there may have been more Xbox 360s shipped, but more Wiis have been sold.

The Wii launched a year after the Xbox 360, but saw rapid sales in every market it has been distributed in. Since its launch late last year, it has outpaced its rivals in monthly market performance.

VG Chartz says that very few analysts would have even conceived of this development happening a couple of years back, but Nintendo proved all its critics wrong with innovative controls and casual games that expanded the market.

The last time Nintendo led the market was in the early to mid-90s during the heyday of its SNES system. It saw tough times with last generation's GameCube but rebounded strongly with the Wii.

The Wii has breached another milestone, its sales soaring over 10 million consoles. By the writing of this article the Wii holds 41.2% share of the market.

 

Despite heavy support from Japan where sales are up to 3.32 million, it's still sold the most in America with 4.07 million consoles. The Xbox 360 is still strong, selling 6.64 million consoles in a America alone, and with total worldwide sales of 10.32 million consoles.

With the way things are going for the Wii though, we may see a turnover soon. A month ago the Wii was a million behind the Xbox 360; today, it is now only about 220,000 behind. The Xbox 360 currently holds 42.1% of the marketshare. However, should rumors prove true about the Xbox 360 price drop this month (and signs point to yes,) we may see spikes in the market.

In a discussion thread over at the VG Chartz website, user ckmlb just posted that the recent Official Xbox Magazine (OXM) issue rated BioShock (PC, Xbox 360) with a perfect score of 10/10. Well, that isn't altogether that surprising since PC Gamer crowned the same game with a 95% score.

Now with OXM's 10/10 gracing 2K Games' FPS-RPG title, the UK magazine backs up their rating with the following reasons:

• Inconceivably great plot
• Tough, scary combat
• Perfect location design
• Stunning soundtrack and audio effects
• Endless variety of weaponry

To compare that 10/10 score, cmlkb points out that Halo and Halo 2 got 9.5/10 and 9.7/10 respectively. Kind of puts things in perspective doesn't it? Well, regardless, August 21 is just around the corner - if you can't wait, the demo just might show itself soon -  and at that time, everyone else can get their grubby hand on Big Daddy himself. Will OXM's 10/10 hold out?

Here's the latest on sales of hardware and games for the weeks ending on July 7 and 14. July 14, it has to be noted, is just a day after E3.

 

Recent data gives light to Sony's claim of a doubling in their sales since their US$ 100 price drop. For the sales week ending on July 14 at least, sales for the PlayStation 3 rose 131%, more than double, outrunning the sales of the 360. The Wii rose by 10% but the Xbox hardly moved, selling only 1% more than the previous week.

The Nintendo DS is enjoying a ginormous success; although sales slipped by 5%, you can hardly scoff at more than 97k units sold in a week. The PSP sold only 50k on the same week.

It also looks like the top 5 games in Amazon last July 8 seems to be just as popular to non-online shoppers. The most popular games for each console is Wii Play for the Wii, The Darkness for the Xbox 360, and Ninja Gaiden Sigma for the PS3. Still going strong for the Wii are Mario Party 8 and Resident Evil 4. Slipping into the 360's favor is Transformers, while Gears of War is almost out of the top 10 in 9th place. Transformers also made it to PS3's top 3, and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas is still popular in second place.

Of the total of 11,878,996 units of next gen consoles that have been sold in America, 55% of those are Xbox 360 units, 31.3% are Wii, and the PS3 accounts for 13.7%. Also, if the PS3 continues to sell more than the 360, and if the Wii continues its current pace, the 360 will be in for some tough times.

For a detailed list of the sales for the week of July 7 and 14, you may click our Read link below.

 

It's official: there is no stopping Nintendo's momentum. As if it was just yesterday since the Wii reached 8 million, Ninty's product of innovation and waving sticks have finally arrived at the 9 million milestone - just a million away from Xbox 360.

Looking at the numbers VG Chartz had more than a month back, the Wii sold almost a million units since early June. The PlayStation 3 had a solid month and sold more than the 360, but both pale in comparison to Wii's performance.

On the handhelds side, the DS continues to dominate with almost 45 million units sold. Sony's PSP, while behind by a huge margin, still experience healthy sales as it got past the 22 million mark.

Let's not beat around the bush, here's what VG Chartz gathered:

Xbox 360: 10.08m (0.41m Japan 6.50m America 3.16m Others)   
Wii: 9.05m (2.98m Japan, 3.64m America, 2.42m Others)
PS3: 3.69m (1.00m Japan, 1.58m America, 1.11m Others)

DS: 44.97m (18.14m Japan, 13.11m America, 13.72m Others)
PSP: 22.15m (5.75m Japan, 8.63m America, 7.78m Others)

 

Hot in the news is the estimated worldwide sales numbers for Nintendo's new-gen console, which just hit a mark less than two million to the Xbox 360's current sales count. The Wii is now just 1.28 million units shy of taking the lead in the hardware base establishment race, reports VG Chartz, a source for worldwide console sales.

And what's more, third-party onlookers note that if this month's sales continue in similar numbers, the Wii could well zoom over all the high-powered next-gen consoles in eight to nine weeks or late August 2007. If rendered true, the Wii will have swatted all console race analysts' predictions to date. The Nintendo DS still outruns the PlayStation Portable, while the PlayStation 3 is slowly making its way up in its ten-year marathon.

However, numbers in Nexgen Wars have different estimates for the worldwide sales for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii. So it would appear that nothing is etched in stone until the three console companies come forward with their quarterly sales numbers, hopefully at the same time they release their Q3 2007 financial performance reports.

Consoles (numbers in millions):

Xbox 360 - Worldwide: 10.13; Japan: 0.41; America: 6:47; Others: 3.25
PlayStation 3 - Worldwide: 3.61; Japan: 0.98 ; America: 1.56; Others: 1.07
Wii - Worldwide: 8.85; Japan: 2.91; America: 3.57; Others: 2.37

Handhelds (numbers in millions):

DS - Worldwide: 45.36; Japan: 18.01; America: 13.03; Others: 14.32
PSP - Worldwide: 22.34; Japan: 5.71; America: 8.58; Others: 8.05

Gears of War (GoW) stays on top of the heap as the undisputed number one Xbox360 title. This is really no surprise as this title has literally taken over worldwide as VG Charts report sales of 3.81 million copies.

GoW takes a lofty lead from Call of Duty 2 in second (1.96 copies) and Tom Clancy Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter in third (1.85 copies). The rest of the list include Madden NFL 07, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Call of Duty 3, Fight Night Round 3, Perfect Dark Zero, Tom Clancy Rainbow Six: Vegas, Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, Dead Rising, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, and Saints Row. So far, nothing's shaping up enough to dethrone GoW anytime soon.

Is it possible to overthrow Gears of War? And if a new title is going take the throne away, which do you think most likely will?