'Halo 5: Guardians' review, release date, price & gameplay: Xbox One videogame raked in record-breaking $400 million on its launching week

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The total franchise sale of the Halo video game now stands at more than $5 billion, thanks largely to its latest offering, the "Halo 5: Guardians," which has broken previous records and now considered the fastest-selling Xbox One exclusive game after its hugely impressive global sales of over $400 million in its first week of launch alone.

Apart from this financial windfall, the fifth "Halo" was also the most played of any game on Xbox One, as well as in the Xbox Live. And to add cherries on top, its video game launch broadcast, the "Halo 5: Live," was the most watched, earning it a Guinness World Record distinction with more than 330,000 unique streams on the evening of the broadcast and a total of 5.5 million views throughout the week for its broadcast content. This lead to the "Halo 5: Guardians" becoming the best-selling digital game ever in the Xbox Store for an opening week, according to a Microsoft press release published by the PR Newswire.

"The success of 'Halo 5: Guardians' is a testament to the innovative work from the entire team at 343 Industries to bring this installment to Xbox One and the incredible community of fans who have come to love the story, characters and gameplay central to the franchise," said Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft's Xbox team. "The game represents all the possibilities of Xbox One and has earned its place as the anchor title in the greatest holiday games lineup in Xbox history."

Review and Gameplay

With a storyline dubbed by Microsoft as the most dramatic Halo story, the game has a brand-new Arena multi-player mode and fresh new mission campaigns. According to TwinFinite, the game developer, 343 Industries, did a great job maximizing the power of Xbox One to come up with the characters with a truly beautiful and cinematic look, while the soundtrack was also noteworthy as it aptly sets the mood of the game.

Halo 5: Guardians is a shooting game in the first-person perspective, with the usual camera switch to a third-person view from time to time for some cinematics. It has now included a wider range of weaponry options and has done some tweaking in its gameplay details such as in its combat controls.

Release Date and Price

The "Halo 5: Guardians" is now available and comes with a retail price of $59.99 and can be bought from microsoftstore.com, in more than 110 Microsoft stores in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico and other major U.S. retailers, as well as via digital download. It was released last Tuesday, Oct. 27.