Captain Spark released another batch of dialogue snippets, this time all Elites. You can snag the entire batch at his website, zipped, or peruse them at your leisure in our Dialogue Databank.

The Business section of today’s New York Times took a pretty in-depth look (free registration required, or visit bugmenot.com for a user/pass) at the Halo movie deal. It contains details about what Microsoft was asking (stuff I haven’t seen elsewhere yet), as well as what each party got (Microsoft seems to have gotten 10% of the movie’s gross – less than the 15% they asked for, but still a subtantial chunk)… but all of it is contingent on MS ceding some creative control, something they may not be willing to do. Great writeup – and nice to see a picture of the Master Chief on the front page of the NYT Business section. Thanks, wayn0ka.

Because of the day or so downtime on the Fan Fiction section this week, there are only 8 new pieces for you today – go read!

Couple of tourneys we’ve heard about: Video Gamers League has posted details of their Orlando Regional Championship, to be held at the Xtreme Auto Xpo next Sunday, June 19, in Kissimmee, FL, and Scooter pointed out that tomorrow, in West Chester, OH, there’s a singles and doubles tourney hosted by Game Junkie. If you’re in either area, go play!

Greendude was cleaning out his closet, and came across a collection of pogs, a game that gained new popularity about 10 years ago (follow the link for more info). He found one that looks eerily like the Master Chief… weirdness.

The Halo Cutscene Library is now complete – we’ve posted the Final Credits today. And for those who don’t want to download individual files, HaloChat has bundled up all of the WMP9 Hi-res versions (minus this one, I’d assume), and made them available in a single 368 mb zip download. Wonga!

Our own Count Zero has finally compiled his photos from E3 this year – there’s very, very little Halo content, except for the Plasma Fiesta subsection. And I must say I was disappointed with his Booth Babes section – he missed some of the best ones. All that aside, though, there are a LOT of pics, and some very funny captions. Check it out!

Today’s Halo Babies comic takes a look at one of Bungie’s strategies during this week’s Halo Humpday Challenge. Oooh…

SketchFactor wrote up Bungie’s version of the Halo Humpday Challenge against the Halo Babies crew (you’ve already seen HB’s version) yesterday – there’s a veiled threat that unless the next challenger tosses the match and lets Bungie win, they might cancel the whole idea of the HHC. Ouch!

mindquirk hivebrain writes to say that his Mac OSX software, which includes a Friends List viewer, a Halo 2 Stats viewer, and a standalone Halo2 emblem designer, is now fully compatible with Tiger, and available for download. Go Grab the suite – or just the apps that interest you!

The last two contestants (winners from Japan and the US) have been added to the Worldwide Halo 2 tourney, so finals are all set for today. Xbox.com has set up a Tournament Bracket to allow you to keep track of the action – check it out! Thanks to TeamXbox and Daily Game for the heads-up.

Lots and lots and LOTS of people have been sending us links to stories about the Halo movie script being shopped out recently – they must have missed this news post, and this one, both of which went up on Tuesday. However, today, there’s NEW news – Variety has put up this story (it was free if I watched an ad), which says that Fox and Universal have agreed to split costs on making the movie, and to pay Microsoft $5 million up front for the script (half of what they asked for). It’s unclear how much of the actual movie’s gross is also on the table. And it looks like this film will be in theaters by 2007. SUPERTOY found this at Aint-it-cool-news. Update: GAH! Looks like I’m as guilty of recycling old news as all those people writing to us. 🙁 Sorry, mnemesis.

Supertoy sends word that AICN is reporting (with back-up from Variety) that Fox and Universal have partnered to purchase the Alex Garland Halo script mentioned earlier this week. Not like it wasn’t going to get bought by somebody, right?

Thanks muchly to Fazeaway, who’s minding the store while Deimos is away – the Subnova branch of HBO is back up and running properly, which means Fan Fiction is back online. Go read!

There’s a great summary of Elongation, complete with screenshots and developer commentary, up at Bungie.net right now. This is the first of 5 weekly map previews, leading up to the release of these maps in early July. Thanks to all the folks who sent in links – I think Nedus might have been first.

There’s a new guitar tab – this time for The Last Spartan – over at Powertabs.net… thanks, Shadowsniper689.

Like Halo action figures? Wanna save a little dough? Over at littleplasticmen, all in stock, non-exclusive HALO 2 action figures are only $11.70. (Gee, I wonder how they came up with that price?) Sale runs through Sunday. Thanks, hacksolo. Update: PJ Hamlen points out that littleplasticmen’s shipping costs are several dollars more than their competitors – so even though the figures are less, if you only buy one or two, you won’t save very much money. Bummer.

Nearing completion of the Halo Cutscene Library – today’s releases all show the end of the Maw, and include the standard ending cutscene, as well as the short piece that changes if you play on Legendary, and the scene you get if you DON’T make it to the Longsword before the ship explodes. Go watch!

The Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists have been getting ready to strike over contract disputes with video game publishers – but a deal was struck yesterday that will keep that from happening (pending approval from the unions themselves). Voice actors will receive a substantial increase in minimum pay for video game work, but will not receive residuals (payment for each game sold). Residuals are standard for movies and television, and as voice acting in video games like Halo 2 and GTA: San Andreas is being done more and more by big-name Hollywood stars, this looked to be a thorny issue (probably will be again, in the future). Thanks, Mr Yun.

Over at Kikizo.com, there’s a nice long video interview with J Allard about the Xbox 360 – and of course, Halo 3 gets mentioned. The interviewer asked if the idea that Halo 3 would ship to coincide with the PS3 (a comment that’s already been discredited) would go against the existing philosophy of ‘we’ll ship when it’s ready’ – Allard’s answer did a so-so job of staying away from the whole CONCEPT of Halo 3 (which is the current goal of Bungie PR):

We’re never going to ship a Halo game (if we were to make, hypothetically, Halo games in the future) – we want to have the Bungie team – we want to give them the amount of time they need to create the product that they envision.

So: he’s not saying that anyone’s working on Halo 3 – but if they WERE, they’d be given free reign to finish it they way they wanted to. (This clip is about 6:30 in or so.) Thanks, Eastbeast314 (who found it on Major Nelson’s blog).