Let Microsoft celebrate! As everyone has expected Halo 3 has represented quite a huge success and the sales have surpassed even the most optimistic expectances. The ultimate video game has got enthusiastic reviews; the gamers have crowded in the stores to buy it.

As Microsoft announced the Xbox 360 exclusive game “Halo 3” has officially become the biggest entertainment launch in history, garnering an estimated $170 million in sales in the United States alone in the first 24 hours. The Xbox 360 title beat previous records set by blockbuster theatrical releases like “Spider-man 3” and novels such as “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” Everything has seemed just perfect.

The game has boosted also the number of visitors on Xbox Live Service. “Halo 3 has become a pop-culture phenomenon,” said Neil Thomson, Senior Regional Director, Entertainment and Devices Division, Microsoft UK. “Not only is “Halo 3” setting sales records, it’s also redefining entertainment. Within the first 24 hours alone, we’ve seen more than a million Xbox LIVE members worldwide come online to play Halo 3 – that makes September 25 the most active Xbox LIVE gaming day in history.”

Halo 3 is the latest installment of a franchise developed by now Microsoft’s owned Bungies Studios. The first game, Halo: Combat Evolved was released in 2001 and since then, the game has grown into a global entertainment phenomenon, selling more than 14.8 million units worldwide, logging more than 800 million hours of multiplayer action on Xbox LIVE, and spawning action figures, books, a graphic novel, apparel and more.

The latest results released by NPD Group for August were a perfect illustration of how a game can boost the sales of a console.

During August, thanks to the release of NFL 08 and BioShock Microsoft has raised the sales of its gaming platform with 100,000 units. The Redmond company sold 276,700 compared to only 170,000 units in July. NFL 08 and BioShock were also the first and the third best-selling games with 896,600 and respectively 490,900 units.

But, despite the great success that the highly expected video game seems to have, MasterChief and his adventures are not likely to succeed in accomplishing their most important mission: that of fueling the sales of Microsoft’s video gaming Xbox 360 console.

According to data released earlier this month by VGChartz, Nintendo Wii is leading the gaming consoles sales with approximately 11.45 million units sold (3.59 million in Japan, 4.69 in the US and 3.17 in other areas) compared to Xbox 360’s 10.89 million units (only 440,000 in Japan, 7.03 million in the US and 1.38 million in the rest of the world). According to VGChartz, PlayStation 3 holds only 17% of the next-gen console market, with 4.57 million units sold.

Last week, Microsoft claimed that since the release of Xbox 360 in November 2005 more than 11.6 million Xbox 360 consoles have been sold across the 37 countries.

Let’s assume Miocrosoft is right, but even in this case Nintendo is very close to surpass the Xbox 360 sales.

No matter how smart Halo 3 is, the game will never be capable of changing the reality. That is the fact that the Xbox 360 video gaming console has been already for two years on the market, which means a huge period of time, if one takes into account that in the world of video gaming, where the graphic resources for example become more and more powerful with every day passing by, two years could be easily compared to two light-years for a human life.

So, Halo 3 will not have the power to make anything else than extending for few more months Microsoft’s video gaming console’s dominance on top of the charts. Thanks to Halo 3, Microsoft has just “bought” itself few months of respiro, when the company won’t have to necessarily come up with new solutions for its console.

Currently Microsoft has to combat the fascination that Nintendo’s Wii is exerting on the market, as Wii not only that has a much lower price, but it features also a brand new gameplay with a new interface that allows the interaction with the video games. In this context, no matter how good it is Microsoft’s Halo 3 does not bring new features on the market, as it represents in fact only the coming to the head of a concept.

On the other hand, the other rival console, Sony’s PlayStation 3 is superior to Microsoft’s Xbox 360 from the technical point of view; the games that are designed for its powerfulness are just to come into sight and, furthermore, starting with 2008’s spring, Home might prove to be a more interesting choice than Microsoft’s Xbox live.

More than that, Halo 3 is not capable of helping Microsoft of conquering new territories for Xbox 360. At the boundary between nostalgia and marketing, Halo 3 won’t have any chance of convincing the Japanese gamers to throw away their Wii’s controller for starting gaming alongside MasterChief.

Being squeeze between Nintendo’s Wii and Sony’s PlayStation 3, it seems that the payday has eventually come for Microsoft too, which will now have to pay for its mistakes that are inherently related to its ambition of being the first one on the market. In such a dynamic field as the gaming industry, one single game is not capable of saving a company or its devices and concepts from becoming obsolete.

With Halo 3 Microsoft seems to have consumed all its methods of transforming its Xbox 360 video gaming console into that device that could really represent a rival for Wii and PS3; Microsoft has tried them all: new versions, drops of prices, symbolic games etc.

For remaining a leader on the market Microsoft has been left only one choice: to build a new, better video gaming console, or maybe a controller that could allow a new generation of games to spring out on the market.

Microsoft already announced Halo Wars, a real-strategy game developed by Ensemble Studios and the famous Australian director, Peter Jackson, is working on a new trilogy inspired by the Halo universe.

So, although Microsoft has still two titles inspired by Halo to release, the company has reached the end of an era. How would the new beginning look like?