Year: 2000

We want to apologize for the downtime today… an underground cable broke somewhere, and it took the Telco over 8 hours to find the problem. I’m still not 100% sure it’s solved… but we should be back up for good, soon.

Slow Halo day… so we’ll pass on some interesting Xbox tidbits. J Allard was interviewed over at GameSpot, and had some interesting things to say. Worth a read. (The bit on why they stuck with ‘Xbox’ is intriguing.) The Xbox specs have been finalized, and you can find them here, also at GameSpot. Sharky Extreme…

Budd Morris sends word that he’s starting up a new Halo clan, Halo Division. Currently, he’s not looking for standard recruits… he’s looking for staffers. If you’re insterested, stop by the site and read the job opening list.

Tempest in a Teapot, Part Deux: Okay, this has nothing to do with the other rumor discussed recently… but it sure is silly. Recently, Matt Soell went on an answering spree at Rampancy.net… and tossed out this comment, in response to a question about what operating system the bungie.net servers might move to: We’ve spoken…

Thanks to Pr@iler, who sent along a desktop combining the Xbox logo and a modified Halo logo for our Wallpaper page. Pax.

Thanks to Nights, who, although particlurly tactful about it, uncovered another French Halo site, Clan Highlanders. Through this site, we’ve added a number of French sites to our Links page: Halo Zone (site of the Halo Mystics), Addiction Halo (very nicely laid out), C.I.R.C.E. (all Flash, very little substance), and Fragger’s Halo (who we’d left…

Thanks to Jon Kimmich, product planner for MS Games, who wrote to say that the reason Halo was left off the list of announced titles was becauseThis announcement was just to announce “3rd party” (ie. non-MS) publishers. All titles published by MS are “1st-party” titles, and we’ll make some announcements about them at a later…

Okay, so MS bought Bungie specifically so that Halo could be an Xbox title, right? And Halo’s been shown, in one form or another, for months. (It was demonstrably playable at E3, for example.) So Microsoft had a huge global press conference yesterday, at which they showed a bunch of titles, including Unreal Tournament, Max…

Whoa. We got an email today…”Through the instruments of the Muse, we shall sing the nameless their endsong.” “Silence will end their dirge.””Beat we the rythym, their filth in a blaze will cease. They are flat, andno deeper deafness could their have, than to not see the song that has beenwritten for them.”        -Speaks the…

Thanks to Mojo, who dug out an old (but very nice) wallpaper for our Wallpaper page. Makes me pine for the old Marine!

Kudos to Picky, who found this page at Computer and Video Games… THIS is what the new Xbox logo looks like. Hmm… I still like the old one. 😉 Heh… and check the official Xbox page – now ‘The Word’ section contains not only ‘News’ and ‘Noise’ but also ‘Rumors’!

Tempest in a Teapot Dept: FGN Online is reporting thatDisappointingly Microsoft did not unveil the console itself. However the name of PlayStation 2’s big rival has been confirmed as… Xbox.So whether the form changes or not, the name stays the same. Note to self: stop reading so much into internet outages and misconfigurations.

Just a quick update… Matt Soell confirms that development of Halo hasn’t yet moved into Single Player mode yet. Good thing they’ve got a year! 🙂

Looks like we jumped too fast. In time for the 7:00 pm GMT announcements planned today, www.xbox.com is up again. Still waiting… (Thanks to Cosmic Muffet for the heads-up.) Pax.

More fuel for the rumor mill… Microsoft’s official Xbox site, www.xbox.com, is currently nonexistent. (Well, you can visit… but the message you get is ‘No web site is configured at this address.’) A temporary problem… or a change of name?

Hmm. Seems an article at MSN Computing Central Computer Games Forum referred to the Xbox as “now officially known as the Raven”, until xbox.ign called about the reference. That line is gone now. Does this mean someone screwed up completely, and just got it wrong… or that someone screwed up a little bit, and released…

Thanks to papamarx@speakeasy.net, who writes in with news from Daily Radar, who in turn got it from Advertising Age… Microsoft will be announcing a new name and logo for the Xbox tomorrow in San Francisco. Ouch to all those sites who bought xbox domain names! Pax.

Blam! The Halo SETI Marines climb past Team Slashdot to position 43, despite the defection of a one-time bungie.org staffer (and his 400+ units). Total production is up almost 10% over last week! Darthflounder takes La Crunch Honneur, and SHARkY blasts past 74 teammates for the Frogblast Award. Full details can be found on the…

Picky sends word that Honest3d.com has an article on the Xbox, and where they (Honest3D) think the Xbox fits in the console world. One interesting quote had to do with the rumor of a RAM upgrade (to 128 MB):The Microsoft rep said flatly that in fact the X-Box was still going to be sold to…

Rob McLees, on the current state of Halo:”Halo in its current form takes the old stuff that everyone was so impressed with and holds its head under the filthy waters of a public menÂ’s room toilet.” That doesn’t sound like a disheartened art staffer… That, and more, was posted to our forum by Matt Soell…