Tonight marks my first night back at video game retail in almost two years; it's funny that I can never stay away for too long before being lured back by a store manager who connects with me and basically twists my arm because he wants a knowledgeable person.

Of course, tonight is also the Halo 3 launch... fraught with excitement and potential disaster. The excitement is, of course, the build-up to midnight. Our store (along with many others) is throwing a pre-release party. I'm actually running a SingStar event, probably because I'm a karaoke DJ on the side and I guess it made sense for me to run it. We'll have a fair number of people, I'm sure, and it's nice to see the community get together for a common cause like this one. Although I don't own a 360 currently-- nor am I even remotely a Halo fan-- I can understand the enthusiasm.

The disaster could stem from the widely-reported defect with Halo 3's packing for its Limited Edition. Discs have potentially been jostling around since shipment, and many of the discs are likely to be scratched... some to unplayable proportions. Now, if we had enough copies with which to swap, in case the worst does occur, I'd feel somewhat better about this; unfortunately, it's been confirmed that we have a total of THREE extra copies... that's a total of 32 units, with 29 preorders.

Aside from the logistics of keeping such a huge launch smooth, we now have to deal with Microsoft's huge gaffe. It'll be interesting to see if upper management has heard about this and sets forth a contingency plan for tonight's launch... but I won't know until I get to work at about 7pm (EDT) or so.

Unsurprisingly, Microsoft has yet to comment on this issue, which is being reported more and more as time goes on.

Tonight will get very interesting at the witching hour.