It should come as no surprise that Halo is one of the biggest selling franchises on the Xbox. Since the release of Halo 5: Guardians on the Xbox One, a lot of people have been wondering exactly how many sales the game has managed to make.

Now that data is slowly coming in about sales around the world, fairly accurate information on Halo 5's week one sales are being announced. According to VGChartz, a website dedicated to reporting video game sales, Halo 5: Guardians managed to sell approximately 1.46 million copies in its first week.

The exact first week number, according to VGChartz is 1,457,849 copies, although this does not include digital sales, so we could be looking at over 2 million copies at least.

For an Xbox One exclusive title, 1.46 million isn't bad at all, but it is quite small in comparison to previous Halo releases. In fact, Halo 5 Guardians sold less copies than almost every other Halo release. Here's a week one sales rundown of the last eight Halo games.

No Destiny Game for 2013

During Activision's annual money meet last week, key members of the company doubted Destiny would see the daylight this year, despite Bungie's great effort on the game.

Activision's chief financial officer Dennis Durkin has said "It will also be a year of significant continued investment in several new properties with long-term potential that are not factored into our 2013 financial outlook, including Activision Publishing's new Bungie universe, Call of Duty Online for China and the new Blizzard MMO."

Destiny definitely would bring in a lot of earnings this year for Activision if it were to be released, but it seems the publisher is hoping to get

Spartan Ops New Locations

343 Industries have given a few websites a preview into the next and final episodes of Spartan Ops for Halo 4. An unexpected press release was also given, and it gives details on new areas to visit in Spartan Ops.

In the previous five episodes of Spartan Ops, players have played in the Requiem sandbox, featuring many assets from both singleplayer and multiplayer maps being used more than once. From looking at the press release from 343 Industries, it's safe to say that the last five Spartan Ops missions will include a change of scenery, offering more variety in gameplay and overall appearance whilst playing.

"Reenlist with Fireteam Crimson

New Halo 4 Playlists

Frank O'Connor has taken a look back at the trials and tribulations of Halo 4 in 2012, and is both proud and excited for what's to come next.

"We made a lot of mistakes....There are a ton of things we wish we'd done better: Features that didn't make it into the final game. Glitches that emerged. Missteps made. DLC fiascos. Communication breakdowns, but there were things that went astonishingly well - the creation of a genuinely competitive AAA studio chief among them. A collection of talent and souls that can do something genuinely amazing on this and next-generation hardware."

Halo 4 has seen a successful year despite a few hiccups from the new developer,

Halo 4 MLG

If you're into the competitive side of First person shooters, whether for the social aspect, or for more serious reasons, you'll be happy to know that 343 have finally released the official Halo 4 MLG settings.

The settings are only V1 though, so all is subject to change, and change is definitely expected, especially when Halo: Reach had 8 different versions until it was defined perfectly, and Halo 4 has brought all new physics and gameplay mechanics back into the Halo Universe, so this time round it may take even more tweaking than before.

However, the base settings for V1 include a set structure, and it'll be interesting to see how the community adapts to it. The primary weapon on V1 is surprisingly the BR, taking the DMR completely out of the picture for now. There have been a lot of discussion over which weapon is best, and although there really isn't any clear picture, choosing the BR is a nice initiative and hopefully it'll stick.

New Abilities Halo 4

Halo modding prodigy nowise10 has managed to find some interesting things locked inside the Halo 4 game disc, including two armor abilities that never made it into the full release game.

A video by Halo Council has been put up on Youtube showing the new armor abilities in action. The first ability, teleport, works similarly to thruster pack does currently. However, you can teleport from one position to another without being in danger of getting damaged by other players and the distance seems a lot larger compared to the thruster pack jump distance.

The second armor ability is named hacker and it can in essence stop other players from using their armor abilities. In the video the player demonstrates good use of the hacker ability by stopping a player from using a jet pack while he's in mid-air, as well as disabling most of the other abilities too.

It's unknown why these armor abilities weren't put into the game physically, however

Halo 4 DLC Info

After the launch of the Crimson map pack, players were reporting that they were capable of buying the map pack for free after following a simple bug within the Halo 4 title screen. Players were able to proceed to download the maps for 0 Microsoft points, causing heated discussions within the waypoint forums about the wasted use of the season pass, and an unfair advantage to those who could not get the bug to work.

343 Industries has now made a statement on the issue, and has let all launch players download the map pack for free. Launch players include any players whom have played before the promotional period

Halo and its Victories

A little over ten years ago, Halo Combat Evolved landed on the Xbox 360 and helped define what we know as FPS shooters on the console today. The franchise had a very successful launch, and the popularity of the game only grew as more games were released. Halo 2 completely redefined FPS multiplayer for consoles once again thanks to Xbox Live, and since then, Halo games have received a huge amount of support, giving those staying loyal to the much beloved Xbox-exclusive series even more to enjoy.

Game sales for a console-exclusive are never going to be as impressive as multi-platform game sales, but Halo has still managed to amass quite a heavy amount of purchases:

Win a Car

343 Industries have tried hard to create a lot of incentives to keep people playing Halo 4, but this new competition looks to be the biggest of them all.

Virgin Gaming have teamed up with 343 Industries to create a competition in which all you have to do to play a part is play Halo 4.

The biggest two prizes include a UNSC-themed Ford F-150 SVT Raptor truck and a cameo in an upcoming Halo game.

Other prizes include hundreds of Halo memorabilia, Halo DVDS, books, Mega Bloks, and pretty much anything else to do with Halo.

To be in with a chance of winning, you'll need to register your email at  halo4infinitychallenge.com

Halo 4 DLC

Just a month after launch, Halo 4 has already got its first map pack. The Crimson map pack includes three new levels and is available for 800 Microsoft Points ($10 USD).

If you have purchased the War Games season pass for 2000 points, or own the limited edition of Halo 4, you'll get this, and all future Halo 4 map packs for free.

The three new Crimson maps have been named Wreckage, Harvest, and Shatter, each with varying sizes and game modes available to play within War Games.

Wreckage is a medium sized asymmetrical map with which most of the area is filled with debris. There's plenty of cover areas and lots of winding paths and platforms, a perfect environment for tactical