Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) has unveiled the new release dates for the latest installment of the insanely popular Halo franchise.  Bungie has developed this exclusively for the Xbox 360 and it will be available on September 14, 2010.  ‘Halo: Reach’ is a multi-player online death-match game that will probably feel like a marriage of Halo with the Unreal universe.

More than 2.7 million players have used the multi-player beta.  Normally a game of this class might have a more limited reach than the standalone games, but the raw number of 2.7+ million users in Beta makes this launch a sure thing.

There is a three-tiered pricing for the game.  The standard edition will sell for the traditional $59.99 and a limited edition will sell for $79.99.  The Legendary edition is for the ultimate gamers with what may be a record $149.99 price tag.  GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME) has already started accepting pre-orders.

The limited edition has extras of course, but the Legendary edition comes with a 10-inch-tall, hand-painted and individually molded Noble Team statue from McFarlane Toys.

We do not have any formal pre-order numbers, but the company called these “…off the charts, with fans snapping up the limited and legendary editions since they were introduced just a month ago.”

The kicker here is the raw base of Halo users.  More than 34 million titles of the 3 main Halo titles have sold.  And the pre-orders having the higher prices look to make this one able to compete with that $170 million in sales in the first 24-hour period as seen in Halo 3.

This will probably be a record in first-day sales for the strictly multi-player segment like this.  It could be a record for Halo as well, but we will have to see if that is really the case here.  Unfortunately, “Halo: Reach” is not large enough to add much to Microsoft’s bottom line.

JON C. OGG

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