Halo, World.

Microsoft's launch of Halo 3 today is one of those events in the video game industry where, as in a close playoff baseball game with a slugger at the plate: Everyone in the stadium can smell the home run about to be clobbered, knocking the competition—in this case, the poorly selling Playstation 3 from Sony—all the way back to Tokyo.

Every gaming news and blog site is hotly anticipating Halo 3 as a big boon to the XBOX 360's sales figures, especially as retailers gear up for the ever-earlier start of the holiday season.

Cnet blogger Don Reisinger says that "Halo 3 is the only reason some people will buy a console this generation."

But even more impressive, to extend the baseball metaphor, is that Microsoft has already loaded the bases for its first-person alien-shoot 'em up big bopper. XBOX 360 sales have been steadily creeping up, thanks primarily to the strong sales performance of Electronic Arts' Madden '08 football game on the Microsoft console.

Even Sony's recent price drop for the Playstation 3, the equivalent of bringing the closer in for six outs, has failed to stanch Sony's bleeding of customers and market share.

For Microsoft, today's launch is all about closing the door on its competition with Sony and instead turning its sights towards Nintendo's Wii. With a lot of fun games and its mainstream, anyone-can-play-it appeal, the Wii has well outsold both of its competitors, combined.

Regardless of Wii's sales figures, we're not suggesting the XBOX team is unhappy with their sales performance so far. Going inside the numbers, according to market research firm NPD, customers who have an XBOX 360 spend twice as much on all the gear and games for it than their counterparts spend on a Wii.

Thus, even if the XBOX never matches Nintendo's M.V.P.-like sales figures, the impact of each XBOX 360 sold on recurring revenue is more valuable to Microsoft and game manufacturers than the Wii has been.

Advance reviewers have said that playing Master Chief, the game's protagonist in this (apparent) finale to the Halo trilogy will be everything that intense video gamers have been hoping for.

Now the masses will finally have a chance to fire up the latest in the series on their consoles. And the industry websites have all weighed in on the likelihood that this blow from Microsoft will chase Sony clear out of this generation of the console wars.

All that remains, as they say in the big leagues, is to play the game.

by Paul Smalera