Everyone knew that Halo 4 was going to have a huge launch, and now Microsoft is conforming that with some fresh sales figures.

According to the company, Halo 4 topped $220 million in sales worldwide in its first 24 hours on the market. They compare that to some other big opening day launches from the world of cinema:

“Halo 4 garnered more than $220 million worldwide, eclipsing the record for the biggest day-one opening in U.S. box office history, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, and the biggest movie of 2012, The Avengers – based on U.S. sales alone,” says Microsoft.

They expect sales to top $300 million over the course of the first week. As of now, the huge opening has pushed total sales from the Halo franchise over $3.38 billion.

In terms of actual player numbers, they registered 4 million players who spent 31.4 million hours collectively in the first 5 days. In all, Halo players have spent over 5 billion total hours playing the various games.

“We’re thrilled that ‘Halo 4’ has emerged as the biggest U.S. entertainment launch of the year,” said Phil Spencer, corporate vice president of Microsoft Studios. “Thanks to the millions of fans worldwide who helped make this another record-breaking launch for the ‘Halo’ franchise, ‘Halo 4’ is kicking off a strong holiday season and has become the must-have blockbuster experience of the year.”

The big key there is “holiday season.” Halo 4’s sales will continue to increase as we get closer to the peak gift-buying time of the year – but it will have to compete with some other big releases, for instance Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 which hits the shelves tomorrow.