According to Xbox.com, Halo 3 has gone gold, or been “released to manufacturing” according to the article.

Looks like RT mentioned it first in the HBO forum, and of course it’s been picked up by HBO itself, Major Nelson, Xbox 360 Fanboy, GameSpot and the horse’s mouth: Bungie.net.

In a short but sweet news post, Luke Smith writes:

We have to say thanks to everyone at Bungie who worked so hard to make this the best game we’ve ever made. We have to say thanks to everyone at Microsoft who helped us make it the best game we ever made. We have to say thanks to our tireless team of artists, designers, engineers, musicians, technicians, writers, directors, producers, thinkers, administrators, ninjas, specialists, gorillas, webmasters and pimps. We’re a family and we made this game for you, our extended family. We hope you like it. Nobody deserves any more recognition than anyone else, but an extra special thanks goes out anyway, to the test team who got it to this stage, in a pool of their own sweat, tears and blood.

HBO is running another Seven on the Seventh contest; the prize this time is Marathon: Durandal, the XBLA conversion of the Bungie classic by Freeverse. To enter the contest, draw a picture of the Master Chief having “wacky adventures” in older Bungie games. See HBO for the complete rules.

It’s time to check out the best gamers online magazine again.The Blue Skittle for this month brings you a load of cool reads and some very interesting articles, interviews and graphics.

Check out The Blue Skittle latest issue as Foo Mo Jive was featured in a special article again this month. Check out all the PAX talk by our writers and some of the best articles yet.

I would like to take the oportunity to thank Ooopy, Kiki and all the staff from TBS that was representing not only TBS but also Podtacular at PAX.

Thanks guys. You guys Rock!!!!

It’s hard to escape the concept of repetition in entertainment, especially in gaming. While the word “repetetive” itself is often used as a criticism (hello Halo 1’s interiors) games are designed to be played repeatedly, and incorporate repetetive elements into their designs.

It’s understandable. As an object lesson in entertainment economics, look at the DVD player. Widely hailed as the fastest-adopted new entertainment technology, it is built on the foundation of repetition; the idea that people will want to play the movies and television shows they love over and over. Given that game console hardware and software are both about three times as expensive as DVD players and DVD discs, they have to be at least as repeat-friendly to warrant that kind of investment.

There a lot of different ways to extend a game’s useful lifetime and give gamers more bang for their buck by allowing for repeat plays; the Halo series, as well as many other games, provide excellent examples of this.

Since the nature of online multiplayer itself is repetition– short competetive matches played with a seemingly endless revolving door of random opponents– we’ll leave that aside for the moment. Many games don’t have multiplayer at all, and even most that do don’t encompass all of their purchasers in online matches. However, there are many ways that repetition is used in designing a single-player campaign that can remain interesting after many playthroughs.

Click “read more” from the front page for the complete text.

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Combination Halo fansite and gaming group The Hushed Casket is celebrating its fifth anniversary; head on over and check out Midnight‘s recap of the past year, as well as their more exhaustive site history.