Desperate to explain away the worst box office sales since 1999, film executives have turned their attention to Halo 3.

The sales for the first weekend of October were just $80 million in the States, down 27% on the previous year, and with Halo 3’s launch just a week before film industry insiders are coming to conclusions.

"The audience on this game is the 18-to-34 demographic, similar to what you'd see in cinemas," said Mike Hickey, an analyst at Janco Partners.

Xbox LIVE had seen 40 million hours of Halo 3 play by the end of the first week, seemingly keep cinema goers at home.

Both the games and film industries are cottoning on to the fact that Halo 3 became the biggest ever entertainment launch, and it sees that nothing will be the same again.

"We marketed Halo 3 like a film," said Josh Goldberg, a Microsoft product manager, "and now, we're just as big or bigger than film."