Halo World Championship Features $2.5M Prize Pool

By Beverly Linao

Feb 24, 2016 05:02 AM EST

Microsoft released an exciting announcement Monday regarding the Halo World Championship. There are 16 teams who will be fighting for the biggest prize pool set at $2.5 million.

The 16 teams will compete in Halo 5: Guardians from March 18 to March 20 in Hollywood. Although the exact venue is yet to be announced, the prize pool itself is enough to fuel the teams to prepare and get for the tournament.

The prize pool is considered to be one of the biggest prizes in the history of esports. Furtheremore, it is claimed to be the first-ever highest for a first-person shooter. "Halo is perhaps the best example of a console hit having success in the esports maket," Independent reports.

It is further expected that the game will easily exceed its $463 million this year and reach $1.1 billion by 2019. During its first week in the market, Halo 5: Guardians has already sold more than $400 million. If this amount will be divided based on the retail price for the game, then it is believed that there were over 6.6 million sold so far.

Experts believe that the biggest contributing factor to the sales is the fact that the franchise has reached steady popularity all throughout the 21^st century.

Furthermore, the game has a rating of 85 out of 100 on Metacritic, a game review aggregator. With that review, the Halo 5 is now the highest-rated Xbox One exclusive title to date.

Here are the 16 teams that will compete in the Halo World Championship:

Team Allegiance (North America)
Counter Logic Gaming (North America)
Evil Geniuses (North America)
Team Liquid (North America)
Noble eSports (North America)
Renegades (North America)
Triggers Pound (North America)
Denial eSports (North America)
Epsilon eSports (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa)
FabE (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa)
exceL (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa)
Team Infused (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa)
Team Immunity (Australia)
Team Exile5 (Australia)
Skyfire (Asia)
Chosen Squad (Latin America)

Halo 5: Guardians, on the other hand, has come up with 'Hammer Storm' update, with 343 Industries hosting livestream today.

Halo 5: Live has also garnered a Guinness World Records for the most-watched video game launch broadcast, with at least 330,000 recorded unique streams on the evening of the broadcast, based on a VentureBeat report.