‘Halo 3′, the long-awaited game from Microsoft, made US$170 million at its XBox 360 launch in the United States alone. This may mark the most successful release in the entertainment industry. Microsoft claims the sum is more than Spider-Man 3.

It is also, according to Microsoft, more than what the seventh Harry Potter book, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” made in its first 24 hours. Analysts believe the sum includes presales, which came to 1.5 million games.

Halo 3 Rakes in $170 Million at Launch

Halo 3’s Master Chief might be fighting to save humanity, but the final video game in the trilogy already declared a victory over the world of entertainment.

On Wednesday, Microsoft announced that the Xbox 360-exclusive title enjoyed the biggest sales in entertainment history. By the end of the first 24 hours, it had taken in $170 million in sales in the U.S. alone — which Microsoft said was more than the launches of the blockbuster movie Spider-Man 3 or the hit Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows book. According to analysts, this figure includes about 1.5 million units sold in presales.

The company said that in the first 20 hours, more than a million gamers battled The Covenant on Xbox Live. Over 10,000 stores opened at midnight on Monday night to accommodate the launch.

Without needing to use traditional launch hyperbole, Microsoft Game Studios’ Shane Kim said in a statement that Halo 3 “has become a pop-culture phenomenon.”

Cloud on the Launch

However, there has been one cloud across the blazing sunrise that is the Halo 3 launch. Following widespread reports of scratched-though-playable discs in the Limited Edition version of Halo because of a faulty packaging nub, Microsoft said that it will replace scratched or otherwise damaged discs for free, through February 1 of next year.

Microsoft has “stepped up to do the right thing” about the scratched discs, said Mike Goodman, an analyst with Yankee Group and a huge fan of the Halo series. “You don’t want anything to mar your launch.” But he noted that, if the company’s quality control was operating correctly, there never would have been a scratched disc problem.

In the game itself, though, Goodman said, the makers got everything right — graphics, game-play, and artificial intelligence. But, he added, it’s “unfair” to compare Halo 3 to Spider-Man 3’s theatrical launch because the $170 million sales figure includes months of presales. “You can compare it to Harry Potter, which had presales,” he said, pointing out that a movie premiere is only day-of sales.

Xbox 360 Positioned for First

With those caveats, Goodman said that Halo 3 is “an incredibly important product for Microsoft.” If it had failed, he said, Xbox 360 consoles would clearly have sunk to third place among current consoles, behind Nintendo’s Wii and Sony’s PlayStation 3.

But now that Halo 3 is a hit, he said, Microsoft might be positioned to take first place. He noted that the Wii is roughly tied in sales with the Xbox 360 in the U.S., and its top position comes mostly because of strong sales in Japan. But the Wii’s sales will falter, he added, because its core audience is not long-term gamers. “In five years,” he predicted, the first-place console “won’t be Nintendo.”

An audience that stays with video games has been essential to the industry, he said, adding that the biggest reason that the game industry as a whole is growing “is because it’s graying.” He said he played them when he was 18, and he’s playing them now in his 40s.