Halo3 passes a huge milestone, as word surfaces that the Chief will be seen again.
You'd have to be a blind Tibetan monk to be unaware of the popularity of Halo 3, but even if you are an up to date and keen-eyed gamer, you may not know just how popular it is. Thankfully, Bungie is keeping score.
"Saturday night, while many of us were stuffing food into our faces, plenty of folks were still playing Halo 3. At precisely 6:36pm PST, in a three minute and nineteen second game of Infection on Foundry, four players participated in Halo 3's one billionth match."
Hot diggity, that's a lot of games right there, and we must admit we may even be chuffed to know that some of our own modest attempts at pwning have added to that mighty total. Bravo.
However, to help us with some perspective on those billion games, Bungie's run the numbers...
"If each game of Halo 3 lasted only three minutes and nineteen seconds, mirroring the Infection game outlined above, the total amount of time played would eclipse sixty-three centuries. For those looking for more granularity, that's roughly 630 decades, 6,300 years, or 2,300,000 days."
The numbers are inarguably impressive, but we feel Bungie's not gone far enough! How about some metrics for, I don't know... teabagging, for instance. If you assume a conservative six dips per match you end up with 12 billion balls in six billion mouths. Mindboggling. But what about smacktalk? If you condensed the taunts, namecalling and tantrums of a billion Halo 3 matches into a single volume, you'd up with a book that had the power to make Andrew Dice Clay blush like a schoolgirl.
True story.
And speaking of true stories, it looks like we've not seen the last of everyone's favourite Spartan. Speaking to USA Today about the upcoming Halo: ODST, Halo franchise development director Frank O'Connor sounded sanguine that the powered armour hero was not forgotten. "I doubt we have seen the last of Master Chief."
Issue: 133 | February, 2012