Anybody see Titanic? Nevermind. Halo 3 is a force like the world has never seen! It’s got more stopping power than Y2K. The film industry has taken the biggest beating so far. Apparently, movie ticket sales peaked at only $80 million for the Oct 5th weekend–That’s a drop of 27% from the same time last year.

From Adage:

Blame the Master Chief.

Glued to joysticks
Many film executives are convinced audiences stayed home to play Microsoft’s carpal-tunnel classic, “Halo 3,” which went on sale on Sept. 26. The game sold an astonishing $170 million worth of copies on its first day, before going on to sell well over $300 million.

It doesn’t appear the Chief stayed in shrink-wrap for long, either: More than 2.7 million gamers have played “Halo 3″ on Xbox Live — Microsoft’s multiplayer gaming offering — in the first week, representing more than one-third of the 7 million Xbox Live members worldwide. Within the first day of its launch, “Halo 3″ players racked up more than 3.6 million hours of game play, and that number increased to 40 million hours by the end of the first week. For those keeping score, that’s more than 4,500 years of continuous game play.