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TalkXbox Wants YOU!
Back in 2005, TalkXbox came looking for applicants for a ‘strategy writer’ – they got lots of great options, and were very happy with the end result. They’re back:We are looking for two individuals (one for video guides and one for written weekly strategies). Obviously, applicants have to be skilled at the game, but they also need to have a nack for writing/producing videos. This will be a paid position, details of which will be discussed in private.
If your visitors are interested in this opportunity, they can email us at contact@talkxbox.com with a game-related writing/video sample.So? What are you waiting for? Go send ’em a sample! (Louis Wu 21:05:45 UTC)
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Buttery Nipple Incident?
Kotaku took a LOT of pictures during their recent playthrough of Halo 3 at Bungie’s offices this week – you can scroll through the gallery for tons of memorabilia, including lots of Halo stuff. Thanks, Schedonnardus.(Louis Wu 20:58:01 UTC)
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Museum now on XBL
MffnMn pointed out that the Museum ad is now on Xbox Live Marketplace; check ‘Game Videos’, New Arrivals’, ‘Halo 3’ to find it. Nice quality!(Louis Wu 19:53:31 UTC)
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Behind the Diorama
Kotaku has a great article about the Halo diorama featured in the Halo ads tearing up the internets this week. The concept of game spoilers is addressed directly (don’t worry, there aren’t any), and there are a bunch of cool photos. Go look! Thanks, Tex.(Louis Wu 18:01:06 UTC)
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Racing to Finish The Fight
The Xbox.com Launch Week Announcement (we mentioned it yesterday) noted that a NASCAR entry would be Halo-themed – but there’s a full press release about it now. I heard about it from Hawty McBloggy, who pulled out all the good bits for you.(Louis Wu 17:58:48 UTC)
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Catching Up with Bungie’s Frank O’Connor-Shack News

There is an interview with Bungie’s Frank O’Connor over at Shack News. I thought it was worth reading, but one part really disturbed me.
“DLC is never based on scraps we swept away from past games, it’s always new maps we decided would be good for specific reasons. For example, we already now see there will be a need for more smaller symmetrical maps.”
I hope there is at least a few small symmetrical maps, I am sure a few can tide me over until DLC comes out. Fingers crossed for Midship redesign shipping with the game.
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RT: Beard of Shame
First off, I bet no one gets my reference in this post’s title. Prove me wrong kids. Prove me wrong (of course you will just google it and pretend to have gotten it along. for shame). Moving along, today’s comic is below, and the sponsor comic is here. Like…
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What’s the final tally gonna be?
According to Next Generation, a financial analyst is predicting that Halo 3 sales will ‘quickly reach $200 million’ – but no word on whether ‘quickly’ means ‘less than 24 hours from release. I guess we wait and see how accurate that is…(Louis Wu 16:51:22 UTC)
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Sensationalism at its worst
Not totally sure why this is news – but it’s shown up on both SPOnG (thanks again, Narc, this time in #hbo) and CVG; a couple of Sony developers were chatting about the Museum ad and decided to post the chat online. And yes, one of them says a bad word about Halo. (What’s more interesting than the bad word is the reaction to the trailer. THAT’S worth reading – it’s a pretty thoughtful exchange.) (Louis Wu 16:24:22 UTC)
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Lofty Goals, Realized
Shacknews has an interview with Frank O’Connor, discussing how he feels about the final product, what’s next (Bungie employees are ALREADY WORKING on Halo 3 downloadable content!), tidbits about the Peter Jackson project, and more. Good read! Thanks again, Narcogen.(Louis Wu 16:05:26 UTC)
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IMAX Event Recap
Some news shamelessly stolen from the Rampancy.net front page (thanks, Narcogen): Zanzibar, over at Evil Avatar, took part in the Pontiac ‘First to Play’ event at the IMAX theater in San Francisco (the New York event happens tonight) – he wrote up his experiences. Factoid that might make a difference for the New York crowd – you can bring a guest.(Louis Wu 15:52:02 UTC)
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Analyst Predicts Quick $200M For Halo 3
Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian says Halo 3 sales should reach $200 million, quoting Microsoft executives who expect $155M in first day says, up $30M from Halo 2’s total.
Next-Generation has the story.
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Get a FREE gaming shirt from Split Reason!
Our homeys at Split Reason have some of the coolest gaming shirts on the planet, especially for Halo fans. And they want to give you one for free! Here’s how it works. The Podtacular logo is hidden in a five places on splitreason.com. If you’re one of the first three people to find all five, click submit news & tips on the right side of the page and send in links to the five pages that have the logo. The winner gets a Split Reason shirt of his choice sent to him for free! What are you still doing reading this? Your friends are searching for the logos right now…
UPDATE: So far we have two winners. Still one more shirt to give away!
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Believe – online a little early
If you can’t wait for an official, high-res copy, Sep7imus found a YouTube version of the upcoming ‘Believe’ ad; it’s simple and powerful. (Later today you’ll be able to download not only a high-resolution version of this, but a ‘behind the scenes’ video showing how the diorama was created. We’ll shoot you a link as soon as it’s up.) For what it’s worth, it seems to me that Microsoft is targeting this campaign at non-gamers. That’s not to say that gamers can’t (or won’t) enjoy it, but I’d bet that far, FAR more people will see (and appreciate) these ads because they’re NOT full of game imagery than would be the case otherwise.(Louis Wu 13:06:16 UTC)
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Kick the Tires and Light the Fires
Nice blog entry (with a handy-dandy calendar of Halo 3 events over at PC World… almost reluctant enthusiasm! (I LOVE the description of the MC as “a kind of generic looking alpha-marine in an gold-flecked olive-colored exoskeletal wannabe bat-suit”!)(Louis Wu 12:49:37 UTC)
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Do You Believe?
The second new Halo 3 ad is out, the one called Believe. It builds on the same theme as the previous ad, Museum.
Joystiq thought it was a little strange, I can’t help but agree a little bit. I half-expected the gruesome diorama to morph into ActionClix figures. They don’t, however.
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Master Replicas Review
Mr. Titan, over at Planet Halo, got his hands on the Master Replicas gun models – and wrote up a review. Go read!(Louis Wu 12:42:44 UTC)
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Shacknews Interviews Frankie
Shacknews asks Frankie how it feels at Bungie now that Halo 3 is all finished. They also get to cover a few other bases: such as baseball in Forge:
Shack: How long do you think it will take before you start seeing things made with Forge and the gametype editor that you had never planned for or anticipated?
Frank O’Connor: Specifically about 23 hours ago–when those guys made [a] baseball [gametype] with rockets and gravity hammers–and that was their first pass at something!–and they even got bases in, we said, “Okay, all bets are off.” We had no idea.
Also a few notes about DOA and Halo Wars.

