Nearly three years to the day after shipping the first game and twenty-nine months after announcing the title, Bungie ships Halo 2 and delivers the Xbox its first-- and only-- profitable quarter to date, shattering single-day sales records in the entertainment industry. The game is one of the last truly groundbreaking titles for the console, which will be replaced by the Xbox 360 in a year's time, and gets a stranglehold on the Xbox Live leaderboard, achieving the top spot in terms of the number of players on the service every single week since its release until the present day.