After the premier of the XBOX 360 game Halo 3 led to one of the worst box office weekends in recent memory this fall, Hollywood bigwigs will be anxiously watching attendance this upcoming holiday season, and hoping video games do not continue to monopolize consumer’s wallets.

Halo 3 sales for its first week topped over 300 million dollars, making it the biggest selling first weekend for a videogame ever. But that’s not all. Halo 3’s first weekend gross was about double that of the first weekend for the Transformers movie- the summer’s biggest blockbuster, an ominous sign.

Also, industry analysts are blaming the Halo release on poor ticket sales for the newest Ben Stiller Movie, The Heartbreak Kid, which was released the same weekend as the Halo 3 premiere. The Heartbreak Kid, a Farrelly Brothers movie in the mold of There’s Something About Mary, did around 20% less business than expected its opening weekend. Having a targeted demographic roughly the same as Halo’s, The Heartbreak Kid didn’t have a chance with most of its potential audience at home battling the covenant, according to industry insiders.

The Christmas season has always been the second most profitable time for Hollywood, but this year executives should be nervous about a slew of games anticipated to be hugely successful with a high potential to keep teens and young adults out of the cineplex. Among them are Rock Band and the newest installment of the hugely popular Guitar Hero series, games that let players pretend to be the stars, rather than just watching them.

Picture note by Celebitchy: Halo 3 and Guitar Hero screenshots via Clubskill.com, How Stuff Works, and Kotaku.com.