Author: halo@bungie.org

Reuters has an article up today in which Microsoft defends the placement of a Halo 3 beta invite in Crackdown boxes.”People are definitely saying “I’m getting a free beta with ‘Crackdown,’ not the other way around,” Evans said. “The ‘Halo 3’ beta isn’t going to push the game’s sales into the millions. ‘Crackdown’ is going…

Chris McGuffin sent along an mp3 of a Halo theme for marching band – it’s been exported from Finale, not played by a real band, but you should get a pretty good idea of what it would sound like live. 2.4 mb. Credit goes to Chris and Josh Link.(Louis Wu 19:15:40 UTC)

It’s Valentines Day, so Stuntmutt celebrates in his own inimitable style in today’s One One Se7en.(Louis Wu 15:37:00 UTC)

According to a news post at bungie.net, Clantacular.com has opened registration for their Halo 2 World Domination Clan Wars Tournament. Go see if you can take over the world!(Louis Wu 15:16:25 UTC)

A couple of days ago, Simply Greg stopped by our forum to mention that his group’s upcoming series, Energy, will be released on March 1. He’d linked to a trailer for the series, but I’d forgotten to mention it here – so I’m doing so now. Earth has been polluted to the point where humans…

Deekor stopped by to point out Halo Outkastz Episode 3 – uniform color changes, mystery boxes, and Spartan answering machines. Sound’s a bit odd – it seems like all the voices are in a single channel (which made it really hard to hear some of the dialogue on my system), but it’s nothing you can’t…

Psychophan7 noticed a flash vid starring Master Chief and Marcus Fenix, from Gears of War, over at Newgrounds. It’s a sitcom. Sort of.(Louis Wu 14:28:03 UTC)

Halo-Pro.com has been a resource for multiplayer vids for years now – and they’ve recently gotten a facelift; tons of content is now easily accessible (you can actually find content far more easily). Take a look around – there are tons of multiplayer matches to watch!(Louis Wu 14:19:03 UTC)

The front-page-linked Player Match Commentary currently up at MLGPro.com is from Shockwave, discussing some gameplay from Anaheim 2006. Some great tips explaining why he does certain things… nice commentary. Thanks, 3Suns.(Louis Wu 14:15:21 UTC)

Play N Trade, a national video game retailer chain the US, has announced a National Halo 2 tournament, to kick off on March 3. Local winners snag a copy of Halo 3 when it’s released, and a $200 certificate. The overall winner gets an LCD TV and $1500 in credit. Entry fee is $10 ahead…

Over at Bungie.net, there’s a Community Spotlight on Maximum FEAR, an adminstrator over at Games in Action. Go see what it takes to run a Bungie-based fansite!(Louis Wu 21:26:19 UTC)

IceWeasel started up a new blog – with a heavy focus on Halo (and Halo 3). Add it to your list!(Louis Wu 20:42:32 UTC)

If you swing by the Bungie.net forums, you can see a full listing of the changes to Halo 2 Matchmaking on Xbox Live – these changes went into effect a little bit ago. Thanks, Hexudus.(Louis Wu 19:32:04 UTC)

Paul Maestri points out Halo Heads 49, in which one of the newest described features of Halo 3 is examined more closely. Maybe TOO closely.(Louis Wu 18:12:23 UTC)

Microsoft has begun sending out emails to everyone registered back in December for a shot at the Halo 3 beta; these notes basically say that all 13,333 invites have been distributed, and if you haven’t gotten one yet, you’re not going to. (It also suggests that you can still get into the proram by buying…

We got email from Erik “P3PP3RM4N” Fikkert yesterday – he had a bunch of fan music he’d created, wanted to know how to get it out to our audience. Well, that’s easy, right? We just post it, and tell you to go listen! Some of these pieces are really slick – I’d suggest starting up…

XerxdeeJ stopped by with this week’s Tied the Leader Tuesday Update – there’s a 22 Questions interview with Sean Gailey, of J!NX apparel, and a Community Profile (née Clan Profile) of O7AH. Go read! (Louis Wu 16:20:38 UTC)

A few days ago, we mentioned a pretty cool thread at Bungie.net, containing a bunch of elite renders. Mike Jensen, the modeler, stopped by our forum last night with some new stuff – check it out!(Louis Wu 13:28:19 UTC)

Over at halowiki.net, there’s an article from XyonsWrath about ‘The Crazy Method’ – it’s a description of a strategy that has a good chance of working against your average Matchmaking opponents. As someone who ‘acts crazy’ a lot, I can see where this is useful! Thanks, PEZ.(Louis Wu 13:24:25 UTC)

Interesting article at 1Up.com – Luke Smith reports that according to Phil Spenser, Head of Game Development for Microsoft Game Studios, Microsoft would like to spread Bungie’s matchmaking code around to most (all?) first-party 360 games; the reason it didn’t make it into Gears of War was a timing issue, not a code protection one.…