than just how much moolah they've made. Outsiders could be forgiven for thinking that videogames were simply about shooting things and coining it.

Tragic really, as Halo has always inspired a particularly fervent level of fan enthusiasm and creativity. It was Halo that provided both the technical engine and the fictional context for the brilliant Red vs Blue

series, which bought Machinima (or machine cinema) to the mainstream. But to understand more about Halo and what it means, we need to look to the players.

My favourite fan activity around the game at present was from a gamer who claimed - correctly as it turned out - that the game wasn't running in true High Definition. How did he know? He paused the action of the biggest media product in history, counted the individual pixels on the screen, found there weren't enough and promptly filed his complaint to an eager internet.

Obsessive behaviour aside, the story of Halo 3 is of a missed opportunity to translate games and gaming to to the world at large. And that's a shame.