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One billion Halo 3 matches now played

Over 64,000 years of playtime recorded.

The number of Halo 3 matches played online has now reached one billion, according to a post on Bungie.net.

"One billion. It's a giant number, one that's difficult to understand without the proper context," Bungie points out.

In fact, despite its similarly huge popularity, Halo 2 has yet to reach the billion mark - with a paltry 798 million matches played so far.

But back to Halo 3. According to Bungie, 64,109 years of playtime have now been racked up, equivalent to 2 trillion seconds. Or to be precise, 2,023,153,340,764 seconds.

"We're in awe of the success Halo 3 has been met with, but we're not done yet," says Bungie. "Stick around and stay tuned, there's definitely more to come."

Such as expansion pack Halo 3: ODST, which is being released later this year. Check out the gamepage for all the latest screenshots and videos.