14 DAY TRIAL // Bungie seems to have confirmed that it will be launching one of the biggest videogames of the fall, Halo: Reach, on September 14 in North America and in Europe, with Japanese gamers having to wait one more day before they can get their hands on it. The final title in the Spartan saga will be delivered exclusively on the Xbox 360 home gaming console from Microsoft.
September 14 was rumored to be the date chosen by Bungie and Microsoft for their big launch. The fall schedule is pretty packed up with shooters, with Activision getting ready to put out the Treyarch made Call of Duty: Black Ops and with Electronic Arts and DICE preparing to also release the new Medal of Honor. Halo: Reach is coming out just ahead of the two and will aim to use the star power of the Spartan super warriors to keep sales healthy through the Christmas shopping period.
Bungie has also offered data on the recently ended beta stage for Halo: Reach, saying that more than 2.7 million people logged into it and offered their time. More than 1.1 billion virtual kills were made in the various multiplayer game modes delivered and more than 16 million hours were spent in game until May 20. The developers are saying that the beta allowed them to see how their game performs in front of the fans and make some changes in time for the final launch date.
Talking about the beta to Yahoo, Brian Jarrard, who is the community director working for Bungie, said, “It's exceeded our expectations. Our only real perspective going into this was the 'Halo 3' beta test, which had about 800,000 people. We knew there were a couple million copies of 'ODST' out there, but we really didn't have any specific information that let us know what the population might be like.”