John "JCal" Callaham has written another of Firing Squad's quarterly updates on the console wars; the page on the Xbox 360 has a number of suggestions to Microsoft on how to win the console wars. FS thinks a flawless Halo 3 launch is important:

Even though the game has gone gold there are still things that could happen that could make the launch an issue. There could be copies of the game that are unplayable due to issues in manufacturing. Pirates could gain access to the game early. A rush of online players on Xbox Live on launch day could cause slowdowns in the network. Microsoft has pretty much everything riding on Halo 3 being a huge success. It can't have anything happen that could cause the Xbox 360 as a whole to suffer.

That's probably an exaggeration. The Public Beta had a few bumps in the first few days, mostly for Crackdown buyers. If some problem prevents everyone from getting online the first few days, somehow I doubt that will affect Halo 3 sales or the 360 platform that much.