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Halo 3 shipped on Monday at midnight, and there were launch parties at Microsoft campuses around the country. These are pictures from the Mountain View, California location.

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This is the registration line. Yes, that’s Robert Scoble standing in line like any schmo.

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Scobleizer with his five cameras.

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He thinks his Canon 5D is better than my Nikon D40x.

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Unloading inventory for the Microsoft employee store.

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Jas Sandhu, the Microsoft evangelist that invited me and Team Truemors.

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Microsoft’s living room of the future.

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Guitar Hero players.

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The food spread.

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Including exotic hamburgers.

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Special edition Mountain Dew.

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Blake Commagere, the author of the Facebook app called Zombies. Two guys in a garage with 4.5 million downloads.

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Eric Wu of Emotioneric. Another great app that I can’t figure out.

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I don’t know who she is, but she wins style points.

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Action in the main gaming room. There were tables set up with three flat-screen monitors, three xBox 360s, and twelve controllers.

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There was a single-elimination tournament. D2 = Team Truemors.

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Our team in action.

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The other team in action. Notice the frantic motion compared to the collective cool of Team Truemors.

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A little adjudication about the final round. That’s Jason Mauer, league commissioner.

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The second-place team. A fine bunch of fellows but second-place finishers nonetheless.

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Yeah, baby, the winning team. Limited edition Halo 3 was the prize.

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Winner #1 of an xBox 360.

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Winner #2 of an xBox 360.

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Winner #3 of an xBox 360.

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And the big loser of the night: Anthony Nemitz of eBay. He could have won an xBox 360 when his name was called, but he was downstairs drinking beer.