Interesting… Stephen Loftus ran across this page at Chapters (a Canadian bookseller) – it lists an as-yet-unnamed trade paperback based on Halo 2, written by Eric Nylund (author of two of the three existing Halo novels), and published by Tor books (previous Halo novels were published by Del Rey). According to Chapters, it’s due out in October. Accurate? A mistake? The ISBN number listed comes up blank at ISBNdb.com… but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. (Doesn’t mean it does, either.) Intriguing, in any case! (While I was looking for other info about this, I ran across this entry at Amazon/Borders – an audio-book version of First Strike, available for purchase for $40. Scoop it up if you’ve been looking for this!)

Over at Joystiq, there’s an article about the Video Games Live concert series (yeah, I know, I said I wasn’t going to mention them any more… sue me). It contains links to video excerpts of a dress rehearsal of the Halo segment, filmed several months ago (the WMP9 version is 53 mb, the QuickTime version is 125 mb), and the video also contains interview clips with Marty O’Donnell and Mike Salvatori. Go grab a copy! Thanks, Rota Jota. (This is, by the way, the same video that IGN had up for Insiders last month – except that it’s free for everyone.)

Coolness – a Stubbs The Zombie demo has been released for Mac and PC; if you haven’t had a chance to try this out, swing by Filerush and grab a copy! (200+ mb…) Thanks, hminn.

Dennis Powers points out that machinima.com has become an official mirror of his Halo CE Chronicles series – nice going!

Almost lost in the flood of ‘BILL GATES CONFIRMS HALO 3!’ emails – DropShock Radio has released episode 9 of their podcast. 50 minutes, 24 mb. They wonder what drives modders on XBL, among other subjects…

Wow, I missed this yesterday – careless. According to a news post on Bungie.net, Marty O’Donnell did an interview with Kilroy, a member of Bungie.net’s Chapter Founders. It’s a pretty rambling piece – but it’s full of tasty morsels. If you’re an up-and-coming Marty Stalker, you owe it to yourself to read this!

Very pretty Halo 2 faceplate for your Xbox360 on eBay right now (2 days left) – I’d agree with ManKitten about the price, though.

Newegg.com is selling Halo 2 for $17.99, today only. If you’re looking for a cheap copy – this is it! Thanks, Snowy_Duck. Update: phoenixdude24 let us know that his local Blockbuster is selling copies of Halo 2 (still with the ‘do not sell before 11/9/04’ label on them) for $9.99… his email address suggests that he lives somewhere in southern Florida. Now THAT’S cheap!

Some wishful thinking, and very nice graphics work, turned an idea into a cool pic – thanks, X3n0!

I really wanted to pass on this – but there are literally dozens of emails in our mailboxes (yes, boxes, plural – folks are mailing this to every address they can find, which is a lot of addresses), so I’m posting it to make people STOP WRITING – Engadget interviewed Bill Gates at CES this year, and he was asked about the release of Halo 3. His answer:

No, I have to make sure that any speculation I did about that is — it’s up to the team when they want to ship that, and they’re going to take their time to make that a super great product. So even we don’t know when that will come out. That’s one of many games that are just phenomenal that are in the works, but it’s up to the artists to do it when they feel good about it.

For folks who are really excited about this stuff, let me clarify a couple of things for you – the fact that he says it’s one of many ‘phenomenal’ games does not mean he’s played it, and thinks it’s phenomenal – it means he knows how important the Halo franchise is to the Xbox(es). And this is not an official announcement that Bungie is working on Halo 3. There. It’s posted news, you can read it, you can point it out to your friends. Can you stop telling us about it now? Thanks!

3Suns points out a number of new tidbits at mlgpro.com – you can find a Player of the Week profile of Poison (Lil Poison’s uncle), Ogre2’s blog, the featured blog of the week (video from WinterLANd coming at some point), and the MLG Handbook, with info for players looking to be sponsored or signed. Check it out!

Feenix writes again – with news of an upcoming machinima contest. Full details will be announced soon, but for now, the basic gist is that winners will be included on upcoming cover DVDs for Xbox World 360, and an overall winner will earn a free game. The rules are simple: the machinima has to be made with an Xbox game, it must be at least 640×480 resolution, and it cannot contain any copyrighted music. Existing pieces (that is, machinima creations that have already been released on the net) are acceptable. Use this announcement to get started on making something new – or to polish up something you’ve already released!

You might remember that this week, there’s a campaign to get everyone to play as Elites on Xbox Live – Stuntmutt looks at some of the people that might not participate in today’s One One Se7en.

John Doe found a pretty random Master Chief inclusion in a Flash vid – you can find it here. Oddness…

The Seventh Column Art competition which ended a couple of days ago had results posted on Bungie.net last night – the second and third-place winners were both Halo pieces (and both artists should be familiar to HBO regulars). First place went to a piece depicting a scene from Marathon. Check out the details!

A number of people wrote to tell me I was really confused (some in words not quite so polite) because of the news post yesterday where I said that Ron Perlman had ‘apparently never heard of Halo’. Um… yeah, I know Ron Perlman voiced the part of Lord Hood in Halo 2. It was supposed to be funny. (He said it, not me – I was just amused by it.) I guess I should be more direct when I’m pointing out funny stuff. Sorry about that. (You guys can stop writing nasty notes now, though. Thanks.)

Wow, cool. Feenix writes to point out that the Cover DVD for the current issue of Xbox World 360 Magazine in the UK has the full half-hour machinima ‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter’ on it – in full DVD quality. While you can download this movie from us (either in pieces, or as a single video) or from the HiaLH website – you CANNOT see it in full-screen glory unless you grab this mag. Nice!

The MLG PwnCast is back – with a new website, and a new episode. Go check ’em out! (Next week, Episode 5 will feature Lil Poison!)

1Up.com has put up a piece called ‘Top Ten WTF Moments of 2005‘ – and coming in at number 7 (heh) is ‘Spartan in DOA’. The reason it made the list? “Because when you think of one-on-one, boob jiggling martial arts action, you think of Halo.” Fair enough! Thanks, 3Suns.

A Master Chief resin sculpture (these were promotional items in Europe last year) is up for sale on eBay. We’ve mentioned these before – but they’re usually in Europe, and this one is in the US. Starting bid is $160, Buy it Now price is $210, and you’ve got almost 5 days to make up your mind (unless someone else buys it first). Thanks, Cassius.