Halo 3 broke opening day sales records for video games and did better than opening day records for movies, too.

Halo 3, distributed by Microsoft, earned $170 million within 24 hours of release, according to MSNBC. The sales toppled those of Halo 2, which earned $125 million within 24 hours of release, according to MSNBC.

To put the magnitude of the sales in perspective, the current opening day box office record is held by “Spiderman 3” at $59 million, according to MSNBC.

GameDaily BIZ, a gaming news Web site aimed toward professionals in the field, estimates that Halo 3 sold approximately 2.34 million units over the three available editions.

The Standard Edition sold approximately 1.3 million copies, the Limited Edition sold about 660,000 copies and the Legendary Edition sold about 300,000 copies, according to GameDaily Biz estimates.

The game sold more than 1.7 million copies at pre-sale and almost 700,000 people purchased a copy without presale, according to GameDaily Biz. Halo 3 failed to sell more copies on the first day than Halo 2’s 2.4 million according to GameDaily Biz.

However, the release did experience a drawback.

Customers complained about scratched copies of the Limited Edition version, but Microsoft is offering a replacement service, according to BBC News.

No charges will be issued for replacement copies of the Limited Edition version until Feb. 1, according to Microsoft. However, the burden of the shipping cost of the disc falls on the consumer, and the replacement copy will take two weeks for delivery, according to Microsoft.

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