Halo: Campaign Evolved, a ground-up remake of the original Halo campaign and the first entry in the series to release on PlayStation, has reportedly struggled to achieve significant sales figures. According to data from Alinea Analytics, the game sold 1.2 million copies across Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox platforms within its first two weeks of release. Xbox was the leading platform, accounting for 42 percent of sales, with PlayStation closely following at 41 percent, and Steam making up the remaining 17 percent.
The title's player count was bolstered by its inclusion as a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass, which saw approximately 2.1 million players engage with the game on PC and console. Of these players, around 600,000 opted for the Premium Pass, allowing them to access the game five days prior to its official launch.
Alinea analyst Rhys Elliott suggested that the game's $50/£50 price point may have contributed to its weaker sales performance, particularly when contrasted with the Master Chief Collection. The latter, which includes multiple Halo titles and their respective multiplayer modes, is available for $40/£40 and has seen significantly lower pricing during sales events.
Alinea estimates that Halo: Campaign Evolved generated approximately $67 million (£49.6 million) in gross revenue. This figure stands in stark contrast to the recently released ports of Call of Duty: Black Ops 1 and 2, also published by Microsoft, which are reported to have collectively grossed $435 million (£322.2 million).
Elliott posits that the success of the Black Ops ports, despite their own technical shortcomings, can be largely attributed to their inclusion of multiplayer components. He noted that these ports, which allowed players to revisit classic multiplayer experiences, outsold Halo: Campaign Evolved by a ratio of 16-to-1. "The only thing the Halo remake left out is the one thing that turned two ancient COD ports into a half-billion-dollar phenomenon," Elliott stated. He suggested that a Master Chief Collection release on PlayStation, complete with multiplayer, would likely have performed much better than the campaign-only remake.
This outcome represents a disappointing impact for a game that, as the inaugural Halo title on PlayStation, a platform with a substantial installed user base, had the potential for greater reach. Despite the sales figures, reviews indicate the remake itself is a commendable reinvention of a classic FPS. As noted in a review, "Halo: Campaign Evolved is more successful at being a reinvention of an FPS classic than it is a reproduction - and that needn't be a bad thing."