There’s a press release flooding the gaming world right now, announcing the existence of Giant Bite Games, a new studio founded by Hamilton Chu, Michael Evans, Andy Glaister, and Steve Theodore, who between them have worked on Halo, Half-Life 2, Counterstrike, and Microsoft’s DirectX technology. The earliest two that showed up in my inbox were at Gamasutra and GameDaily BIZ. There’s also a thread in our forum.

Sketchfactor’s posted a new interview on Bungie.net. The subject is Max Dyckhoff, better known in this community as mad.max, Bungie’s new AI Engineer. The interview goes over a bit of his past, his acclimation to Bungie Studios and what his new job entails.

One One Se7en goes multimedia today. (OMG, I’m infected.)

KrazyGamers wrote an article looking at why so many people hate Halo. If you wonder why, look no further than their closing line: “after all it’s true, any publicity is good publicity.”

So, every week, there’s a new ‘top 10 games played on Xbox Live’ list, and every week Halo 2 is at the top. Some folks are starting to wonder how long it’ll be before something else is number one. Most recent speculator – XboxAddict. Go read.

The Valley of the Forerunners: Part Two, the next installment of the Halo CE Chronicles, has been posted over at the HCEC website. A philosophic look at Blues music, some gorgeous scenery, and some new characters are all included – go give it a watch. Available (as usual) in WMP9, QuickTime, or streaming Flash.

Bryn Casey whipped up another slick image this weekend – he hasn’t come up with a title yet, but the action rocks. Check it out!

Stephen Loftus sent along another analytical article, this time with the help of Dojorkan (who took some awesome pictures). This one looks closely at the Covenant Boarding Craft – that remora-like vehicle which attaches itself to any enemy structure and allows the troops inside to burn through a hull or outer wall to gain access to the space within. Check it out!

3Suns pointed out quite a bit of cool content over at MLGPro.com; you can find a bunch of new photo galleries (new in that they weren’t there before – but the pics are from old events), a focus on Saiyan as Player of the Week, some cool pics from Synide’s journal showing the equipment they use for video capture during tournaments (one of the comments was “when the VoD stuff is hooked up, half the lights in the hotel go off” – I’d believe it), and lots and lots of new VoD content (the NYC championships are currently being rebroadcast). Swing by and indulge!

demus found a nice article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about parents who game with their kids. Halo gets a tiny mention. Good read!

A couple of weeks ago, we mentioned an auction on eBay in which someone was selling crystals for a fan-made needler. Bungie mentioned it, as well, and pointed out that had he been trying to sell the needler, he might have run into trouble. The needles sold for $60 (well below what they cost the seller)… and now, he’s actually selling a needler. Starting bid is $185 (none made yet), with 5 days left on the auction. Thanks, GryphonOsiris.

Holy… wow. Check out this forum post by prometheus, and follow the links to download some of the most amazing HUDless Halo 2 shots I’ve ever seen. Congrats to Major.Dump for getting these.

It’s not totally Halo-related, but he DOES have the messiest desk at Bungie, and it’s entirely possible that large chunks of the Halo bible are buried there, lost forever… so we’re gonna wish Mat Noguchi a happy birthday today! (Thanks to our resident Bungie stalker, mnemesis, who found it on Mat’s brother’s website.

Funky. Someone is selling a custom Halo Lego set on eBay – MC, a Jackal (sort of), two marines, a warthog, and a ghost. Currently at $30 – 2 days left. Thanks, Jono.

What do you do when all the good jokes are taken? Tell them again. As Stuntmutt does in today’s One One Se7en.

Brad decided that it might be fun to play with some of the people who like to swear at you in pre-and post-game chat; he modded his headset to allow input from his computer. It’s amazing how much anger Mr. Rogers can inspire. He’s got 91 recordings online right now, with a couple of hundred waiting in the queue. Go listen to some. (It should go without saying that these are PG-13+ rated.) Brad sent us the same batch of 4 suggested samples (1 | 2 | 3 | 4) as he sent to Joystiq – and they are pretty good…

your dog sends us word of a Halo CE tournament in Murfreesboro, TN, coming up this summer. Details are on this web page.

More podcasting – DropShock Episode Twelve was just released, as well. A look at why Halo 2 is still one of the better games to play on your 360, speculation about why Bungie won’t accept their Humpday Challenge, and more. Go grab a copy. (The main site is redirecting me to MySpace – maybe that’s just when the main server is down – but you can always grab the feed itself at Feedburner.)