Halo 3 launch

Despite Lee's boisterous welcome and applause from the crowd, Williams trundled onto the stage with all the excitement of a man walking into Argos. Things did not go well for him from the start. It turned out the axis inversion was all wrong and the game had to be paused while someone sorted it out for him, and LL Cool J continued to rack up points. There were jeers from the audience for Williams and cheers for Mark Webb, a MySpace competition winner also playing the game and doing it much better than his pop star rival.

In the end Williams managed two kills and came second-to-last, beating Carmen Electra but unable to defeat the might of the Italian Chuckle Brothers. There were a few boos as the results were read out to which Williams responded: "It was my first time playing." The Microsoft execs in the audience must have been hoping they kept the receipt.

The real excitement of the night came next. Lee announced that four players would take to the stage to play a team deathmatch battle, and that the victorious team - red or blue - would win copies of Halo 3 for all those in the audience with wristbands of the relevant colour. This news got much bigger cheers than Williams.

But the cheers were followed by confusion over who was actually going to take part in the match. Then, once it was underway, there was confusion over whether one of the player's controllers was working properly, with Lee shouting "He needs a new battery!" with desperate urgency. Then there was more confusion over axis inversion. Then a member of the audience stood up and shouted, "It's the wrong way round." Turned out the red team on the screen was actually the blue team on the stage.

At the end of the 10-minute match the score stood at red 57, blue 34. Except it was really blue who won. Lee made the best of it by calling for a Microsoft executive to take the stage and Stephen McGill, Microsoft UK's head of gaming and entertainment, was brave enough to step up. Lee demanded that he promise copies of the game for the entire audience to make up for the confusion, adding, "They deserve it." He led a chant of "Steve! Steve! Steve! Steve!" and McGill asked the crowd, "Do you want it?" A resounding "Yeah!" came back. McGill replied, "You can have it." The first proper whoops of the night ensued.

And it was all over, at least for the members of the audience who headed straight out of the IMAX, pausing only to pick up their copy of Halo 3 and a t-shirt on the way. Plenty stayed in the upstairs foyer to try out the game on demo pods. A smaller proportion headed off to the after-show party in Soho.

There was no sign of Christian Slater there, although Pharrell Williams made it along with Caprice and Sarah Harding of Girls Aloud. Chanelle and fellow ex-housemate Chantelle were there too, sticking together like hair extension glue and competing to see who could look through their fringes the hardest. There were a few games journalists, including one who was thrilled to be approached by Richard Branson's handsome son only to realise he was just warning her there was toilet paper stuck to her shoe.

So that was the Halo 3 launch. It didn't prove that gaming is mainstream now; if anything, it highlighted how far gaming has to go. The problem is gamers are cynical, they know their subject and they won't be impressed by a pop star who can't be bothered to practice a game before he goes on stage.

Gaming and celebrities don't mix well, because games don't really have their own celebrities. Yes, there's Master Chief and Lara Croft, but they don't exist in the real world in the same way Brad Pitt or Britney Spears do.

Master Chief's never going to split up with Jennifer Aniston, and Lara Croft's never going to make headline news for poor lip-synching - however guilty she is of it.

The Halo 3 launch did make the Proper News yesterday, and it's true the gaming demographic has broadened. Millions play World of Warcraft, old people love Brain Training, everyone loves the Wii and everyone's Mum plays Solitaire. But if you showed your Mum a picture of Master Chief, could she put a name to the shiny yellow face?

Probably not. So to get the name of its game and its hero known by the wider market, Microsoft has to hire celebrities. The Sun won't report that Pharrell Williams is rubbish at Halo 3, but they might report that Pharrell Williams was at a videogame launch, and they might mention that game is called Halo 3. But perhaps Microsoft, and some other platform holders, just need to make sure that they're not leaving gamers in the kitchen.