Halo 3 Hulabaloo

Yesterday was the craziness around here, what with getting ready for the Halo3 launch around the country at midnight.

We had a launch party for all of the games division with prizes, green beer, cake (Master Chief loves his cake, I guess), army field rations (wtf?), and a free collectors edition of the game (woot!).

I have to admit, I have mixed feelings about the "biggest entertainment launch in history".

On the one hand, I'm all for the hype it brings the platform and the game. Casual gaming be damned, this is our flagship and so by all means, beat the drum. Also, I think the ad campaign with the 'historical' perspective is brilliant.

On the other hand, I just have a hard time beleiving that it's the optimal level of spend. I have to think that with the quality of game being put out, simply putting it on a store shelf quietly would sell two to three million units. A moderate level of marketing would probably get it to four or five. So does another (guessing) $100M justify another 2M units beyond that? I guess so, but its still a little hard to grok. Maybe because I work in a part of the business where teh numbers are usually a little smaller than that :-)

Anyhow, I got my free copy. I then came home and continued my game of Call of Duty 2 :-). Have to finish what I started before I move on to the new stuff!

Oh, and Guy Kawasaki has pix up of the Silicon Valley launch party.