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I don't think Sony expected Xbox 360 so soon. PS2 was sales were still good and there was no console on a market better than PS2 at that time.

Then out of nowhere Xbox 360 comes out, Halo that was a macOS title suddenly a main and a well selling IP on Xbox. Not just that, it also picked HD-DVD as its format posing a threat to Blu-ray.

Sony had to put something out.

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Halo came out in 2001, four years before the Xbox 360 was released.

The Xbox 360 released its HD-DVD drive a few days before the PS3 hit store shelves in North America. Sony had established the PS3 would use Blu-Rays a year before the Xbox 360 was even publicly announced.

I think there were a number of things Sony wasn't expecting about the Xbox 360, but HD-DVD or Halo wouldn't have been any of those things.

> Sony had established the PS3 would use Blu-Rays a year before the Xbox 360 was even publicly announced.

How is it related? We all knew Sony would use Blu-rays, but if HD-DVD won the battle, then PS3 suddenly loses a big chunk of its value - it's a good, "cheap" Blu-ray player.

> Xbox 360, but HD-DVD or Halo wouldn't have been any of those things.

HD-DVD sure, but it's unrelated to what I'm saying.

Halo - not so sure because it only really took off after the second installment IIRC. There were a few titles that were supposed to compete with Halo at launch of PS3, but Halo won.

Halo: CE was a big title on the Xbox even when it launched. It was probably one of the reasons to get the original Xbox. It was one of the fastest games to hit 1M units sold of the generation. Gamespot's review pretty much argued Halo alone was reason enough to get an Xbox.

And even if you're saying it was the second installment of Halo that had the franchise really take off, well, that was a whole year before the Xbox 360 was released and two years before the PlayStation 3. Halo 2 was an original Xbox title, not a 360 title.

And as others mentioned, the HD-DVD playback of the 360 being some big challenger to the PlayStation Blu-Ray is pretty overhyped. It was an expensive add-on. It was another $199 to have an external drive that came out a year after.

So $598 for an Xbox 360 with an external drive that can play a few dozen movies in the end, or $499 for a PlayStation with a built-in Blu-Ray drive. I imagine the PlayStation 3 could have come out 6 months later and it probably wouldn't have made much difference in the format war.

> Surprised 360 had any sales at all then

The 360 launched a year before Blu-Ray or HD-DVD existed. There were no other real off the shelf options.

> If you want to play new Halo with friends - you need an Xbox 360

No, the "new Halo" when the Playstation 3 came out was an Xbox release title. You didn't need a 360 to play the latest Halo until almost a whole year after the PS3 release.

The 360 didn't pick HD-DVD as it's format, the built-in drive was just regular DVD. The HD-DVD drive was an external add-on that they sold along with the 360 Media Remote.

Oh wow, it's even worse than I remember then. Surprised 360 had any sales at all then.

Halo first came out on the original Xbox, not sure it ties into the PS3/360 calculus other than being a launch title.

There wasn't even a Halo game as a launch title, but there was backwards support for the original Xbox Halo games on the 360.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_launch#Titles

There wouldn't be a Halo game released for the Xbox 360 until September 2007, nearly two years after the release of the console.

I tie Halo IP to PS3/360 calculation because at the time of Xbox 360 - Halo became a major IP for Xbox. If you want to play new Halo with friends - you need an Xbox 360.

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