500 million Halo 2 online games played

Anyone who has scored a successful headshot on Lockdown, beaten down a foe with the butt of a plasma rifle on Warlock, or driven a Warthog through the gates of an enemy base on Zanzibar can stand up and say they were a part of gaming history.

Washington-based Bungie Studios, the minds behind the popular Halo series, today announced that more than half a billion games of Halo 2 have been played online.

"To clarify--that's actual games, not player-sessions," says Bungie's Frankie O'Connor. "That also doesn't include games we lost because the Web site was down or through other technical issues."

This is just the latest of several impressive accolades the game has achieved. In just its first few months in retail, the game sold 6.4 million copies worldwide and logged 91 million cumulative hours on Xbox Live. According to NPD, the game has sold more than 5.1 million copies in the US as of April 2006, accounting for almost $253 million in sales domestically.