On May 15, 2007 the news was out, that Halo 3 would be released on September 25 in North America and the 26th in Europe. Halo 3 marked the third in a very popular series for the Xbox 360 called ‘Halo’. According to the vice president of Microsoft’s interactive entertainment business, Halo 3’s publication was much more than only a video game release, it was the biggest media event of the year. He might just have been right as well.

The full history of Halo 3 really has to start with the release of the first game in the series ‘Halo: Combat Evolved’. In November, 2001, when Halo was first released, game consoles were something of a joke as one-person shoot-em-up games. Yes, some games existed, but there weren’t the popular following that the PC games in the genre had.

That all changed with Halo, in which players could battle aliens on foot and in vehicles, in order to complete objectives, while trying to uncover the secret of the Halo. Halo pioneered limiting the amount of weapons a player could carry to two, which in turn, meant forcing the player to take strategic decisions.

Enthusiasts waited for the release of Halo 3 with baited breath. They awaited the continuation of the one-person, shoot-em-up combat format that had been dominant in the two previous versions of Halo. Microsoft calls it the ‘Golden Triangle of Halo’, which consists of gun-type weapons, grenades and others. In actuality, this was not new to one-person, shoot-em-up games, as it had existed since the very first Doom and even the precursor to that game, Wolfenstein.

So, with all of that previous history, people were full of anticipation and excitement over the Halo 3 release date. How popular and welcome was the game? Well, before its release, 3.1 million copies were sold in advance orders and retailers thought that that was insufficient.

The game grossed $300 million in the United States in only its first week. Overall it has sold over nine million copies worldwide and was the best-selling video game in the United States in 2007. Even the critics liked it, putting it the seventh highest in the all-time list of Xbox 360 games.

The Halo 3 release date, like the release date of many widely popular video games was almost like a holiday like Christmas or Easter. It leaves us with the question of what will happen with video games in the future?

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A Halo 3 mod is generally considered to be any software modification that changes the game play in the very popular video game for the Xbox 360, Halo 3. But the terminology also includes many other modifications, such as physical changes made to the Xbox 360 console to show the world that you are a hard-core Halo fanatic.

However, before anyone can create a Halo 3 mod, they must have the right tools, together with some technical expertise. These tools generally include a couple of bits of software that allow people to de-construct, edit, and reconstruct Halo 3 files. It would also involve some hardware to allow the Xbox 360 hard drive to be read into a PC and the files to be downloaded to that hard drive.

You have to do it this way, because the Xbox 360 is not a platform on which files can be modified. Previously, the hardware developers, in this example Microsoft, made the tools available to those who paid the licensing fee. But as time passed, especially with Halo 3 mods, the community created a number of tools and techniques to accomplish what needs to be done for modification.

A Halo 3 mod also encompasses, as stated earlier, physical changes to the Xbox 360 console itself. For instance, some people might remove the case and actually carve the words ‘Halo 3′ into it. They might also accompany this by painting the console red, blue or green to match the colour of the armour of the heroes in the game.

However, it’s a pretty extreme way to say to the world – I love Halo 3 – because it could cause actual damage that renders the Xbox 360 unplayable. People often display their altered Xbox 360s on photo-sharing sites such as Flickr and when they go toattend live LAN events.

One of the stipulations that people who are fanatical about the world of the Halo 3 mod try to insist on is that these should not be used for the purpose of cheating. Modifications are fun to get a new aspect on Halo 3 play or a new look for certain levels. But if they’re used to make the game unfair in favour of one person or team, they ruin the overall game experience for everyone.

One website where a person can find many a Halo 3 mod is H3mod.com. The site calls itself the ‘future of Halo modding’. It seems like a good place to begin if you really want to find out more about a Halo 3 mod.

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