Nearly three weeks after the game's initial launch in Asia, Halo Wars has sold more than one million copies worldwide, which Microsoft says makes it the best-selling real-time strategy title on the current crop of consoles. Of course, real-time strategy titles haven't historically done too well on consoles in the first place, but still, a million is a pretty big number. Microsoft also offers up some more big numbers with the announcement. Did you know that 2.6 million multiplayer matches have been played since Halo Wars launched, or that 118 years worth of time have been spent playing the game on Xbox Live? Well now you do. You're welcome.

Putting Halo in the name of your game certainly does move a lot of copies, though nowhere near as many as an actual Halo first-person shooter title. To put things in perspective, Halo 3 had 1.7 million preorders.

The Video Game Blog has posted an interesting list of the third party Wii games that have sold over a million copies. Some of them are pretty obvious like Resident Evil 4 (1.6 million) and Guitar Hero III (1.8 million) while others were definitely a surprise (at least to me) like Carnival Games (1.2 million) and the top seller of all, Sonic and Mario at the Olympic Games (3.4 million). There are seven games total on the list including three that are getting pretty close to a million like RE: Umbrella Chronicles (900k) and LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga (900k).

While all the games on the list may not be your cup of tea, it certainly is interesting to see what sells on the little white console. You can check out the entire list at That Videogame Blog.
3rd party Wii games that sold a million [That Videogame Blog - via GoNintendo]

"These fantastic results vindicate the hard work and dedication from everyone at 505 that has gone into making this our most successful franchise to date," commented Ian Howe, 505 Games' Managing Director. "We've set ourselves a lofty target, but now we're all keen to see how quickly we can get Cooking Mama 2 to one million!"

COOKING MAMA FEEDS A MILLION 505 GAMES' COOKING MAMA REACHES ONE MILLION UNITS SOLD

Milton Keynes, 6th December - 505 Games today raised a glass as the European sales of its celebrated Cooking Mama franchise surpassed one million units. Released initially on Nintendo DS and later for Wii, the series becomes 505 Games' most successful title to date.

Since its September 2006 release, Mama has sliced, chopped and sautéed her way into the hearts of casual and hardcore gamers alike with her unique and easily accessible 'hands-on' gameplay. And with plans for the much-anticipated sequel to be released in 2008 in full motion, budding chefs keen to serve up seconds won't have long to wait.

"These fantastic results vindicate the hard work and dedication from everyone at 505 that has gone into making this our most successful franchise to date," commented Ian Howe, 505 Games' Managing Director. "We've set ourselves a lofty target, but now we're all keen to see how quickly we can get Cooking Mama 2 to one million!"

Cooking Mama is available in all good gaming outlets for DS and Wii. Cooking Mama 2 is currently scheduled for an early 2008 release.

Major Nelson has posted a link to great PDF of a 1982 book on how to get high scores on Pac-Man in order to help any of you out who may be competing in the XBLA World Pac-Man Championship. I downloaded it to take a look and needless to say it's pretty hilarious, not to mention in-depth. And when I say in depth I mean sixty pages of non-stop Pac-Mania with everything from memorizing patterns to making your own strategies. There's even a chapter on Ms. Pac-man if that's the way you roll.

I was going to post a picture of the book's cover, but this back page with the author's pictures was just too good to pass up. It scarily reminds me of my high school year book. Oh, the pain! Flynn De Marco

How to score a million on Pac-Man [Major Nelson]

How to Break a Million on Pac-Man [PDF]