The long awaited finale in the "Halo" series, "Halo 3", has beaten the previous record of opening day sales held by "Spiderman 3" of US$151 million. In the United States, "Halo 3" got $170 million worth of retail sales in the opening day alone.

The game by Bungie Studios is available in 37 countries, which means the exact opening day figure will be much higher.

More than one million Xbox Live subscribers logged on to play "Halo 3" against each other over the Internet in the first 20-hours of launch, according to Microsoft Game Studio's corporate Vice-President, Shane Kim.

In comparison, "Halo 2", only sold $125 million on it's first day of retail sales back in 2004. The first two "Halo" games have sold a combined total of 15 million copies.

It has been reported that Microsoft spent millions of dollars on marketing the third installment of the popular "Halo" series.

"Halo 3" was launched on September 25 at midnight in each time zone, meaning New Zealand was the first country to play the game, followed by Australia.