Sometime in 2015, 26-year-old Xbox Live user Stallion83, otherwise known as Raymond, expects he'll achieve the goal he set out for in 2006: earning an Xbox Live gamerscore of 1,000,000.

According to achievement tracking website TrueAchievements, it's currently possible to unlock 733,835 achievement points across every Xbox 360 and Xbox Live Arcade game. Microsoft was unable to verify this statistic or provide their own achievement numbers for me. It sounds about right.

Raymond, who declined to reveal his last name to me due to legitimate fears of someone hacking his account, has currently accumulated a monstrous gamerscore totaling 384,155 points.

(Note: It's very likely that number will change by the time you read this story.)

According to TrueAchievements, Raymond has the most achievements point of anyone on Xbox Live. He's closely followed by Zakke Wylde with 351,090 points. Raymond says that's been true for years. Raymond told me Microsoft has never contacted him about cheating, but plenty of players illegitimately chasing after scores higher than his own have been caught gaming the system since he started.

Unsurprisingly, he's been playing games since he was 3-years-old and followed games ever since, especially shooters like Halo and Counter-Strike. He didn't become a self-proclaimed "achievement whore," however, until early 2006.

His first Xbox 360 red-ringed the day he bought it.

"I've gotten the coffin from Microsoft 10 times," he said. "I had to get a couple of them fixed multiple times. Out of 4 systems I bought brand new, only one of them has never red ringed. One time I got the 360 back from repair and it worked for only two weeks. The system that broke on me launch day was a kick in the pants. It was kind of weird calling tech support for a system that I just waited hours to get. The good news is, I unlocked a few achievements before it kicked the bucket."

I have friends who are obsessed with achievements (my former boss, Dan "Shoe" Hsu, spent over six hours unlocking Modern Warfare's end credits mission achievement), but Raymond takes the cake. He's aiming for 400,000 by the end of 2009. He was hoping to achieve 100,000 points per year, but in order to keep his progress on track, he's been forced to alter his road to a million.

"That won't cut it with more and more games being released each year," he explained. "I plan on getting an achievement in every state in the USA before I hit 1,000,000. So, I guess you could say my road map to 1,000,000 is to mix things up."

Many gamers describe a tangible sense of accomplishment when an achievement is unlocked in a game, especially the difficult ones, the achievements designed to be out of reach. But doesn't that hurt the reason many of us play games in the first place...you know, to have fun?

"Sometimes it feels that way but I wouldn't want it any other way," said Raymond. "Instead of playing a single game all the time, I get to play everything. It’s an acquired taste for sure and I don’t think I’ll ever change my ways.

When asked, Raymond isn't able to remember the hardest achievement in his quest for a million ("after you unlock around 15,000 achievements, you kind of forget where you have been"), but he can recall the easiest one along the path: earning 5 points for just pressing start in The Simpsons Game.

"I don’t have any regrets about embarking on my journey to 1,000,000"

According to TrueAchievement's data, which only pulls from users from their database and not from all Xbox Live users (Microsoft keeps that data private), the most commonly unlocked achievement is "Landfall" ("Completed the first mission of the Campaign") from Halo 3.

Almost four years into his million gamerscore journey, Raymond isn't looking back.

"I don’t have any regrets about embarking on my journey to 1,000,000," he said. "It has been an interesting ride so far. The crazy thing about this is, when I’m at 700,000, I’ll feel like I’m getting close. At that point, I will still be around 3 years away."

For the record, my gamerscore is 18,469 points. The only game I've "finished" is King Kong.

You can follow Raymond's quest to a million at his blog, 1 Million Gamerscore.

[image credit: flickr / the gentlemen's game]

Have something to share? Have a news tip? E-mail me. You can also follow me on Twitter.