Halo: Campaign Evolved, the first Halo game released on a PlayStation console, has had a slow start there, according to sales estimates from analyst Rhys Elliott of Alinea Analytics.
Elliott estimates the remake sold around 351,000 copies on PlayStation during July and 452,000 to date, generating close to $28 million. Over the same period he puts Steam sales at roughly 212,000 units and Xbox sales, across console and PC, at about 900,000. Polygon reports that on PlayStation in July the game was outsold by Palworld, Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto 5, several EA Sports titles and Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced.
Elliott points to the price as part of the explanation.
Fifty dollars for what’s essentially a graphical touch-up of a 2001 game was always going to be a hard sell, and players clearly weren’t having it.
Campaign Evolved is a remake of Halo: Combat Evolved that adds three prequel missions under the Operation Meteorite story arc. It ships without multiplayer, which both outlets identify as a likely factor given that multiplayer is what the series is best known for.
The Black Ops comparison
The contrast is with a much cheaper bet by the same owner. Microsoft and Activision released Call of Duty: Black Ops and Black Ops 2 on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, and Elliott’s figures put their combined sales above 11 million copies. Polygon, citing the same data, breaks that down as roughly 3 million for the first game and 8.2 million for the second, at $39.99 each or $19.99 for PlayStation Plus subscribers, for an estimated $435 million in revenue.
Those ports were handled by Iron Galaxy and, Polygon notes, ship without graphical updates or changes from the original versions. Both games had previously been available on PlayStation only on the PS3, while the Xbox 360 versions remain playable on modern Xbox hardware through backwards compatibility.
Elliott framed the gap as a franchise problem rather than a single release: he said the slow start "stings even more" next to the Black Ops numbers, and that Halo has been sliding since the era of Halo 3 and Halo: Reach. Polygon notes Halo 3 sold 14.5 million copies on a single console.
More Halo games are in development, and Halo Studios has said future entries will also come to PlayStation. Those comments predate Asha Sharma becoming Xbox CEO and pledging more exclusive releases for Xbox.
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