At long last, Halo 3 has been released. I loved Halo and bought Halo 2 the first day. I’ve played through them more times than I’d care to admit. This time however, I won’t be joining in the fun. Currently, I’ve got an Xbox so I’d have to pay a minimum of $399.99 (plus tax) to get an Xbox 360, and then buy the game. No matter how much I like it, $500+ for a video game is asking a bit too much.

It would be a completely different story if I already had an Xbox 360. It seems many others do, or have money to burn, because it generated more than $170 million on the first day, in the United States alone. More than 1.2 million unique users had logged in to play on line by noon on the second day, racking up an impressive 425 million kills in campaign-mode. The UNSC is seeing no shortage of recruits, it seems.

As for me, if I had an spare $500, I’d put it to a different use. My car loan, an iPod Touch, or even a nice start toward saving for a Mac would all be better uses. The Master Chief will have to go on without me, at least for now.

Halo 3 package art ©2007 Microsoft Corporation.