According to this Reuters article, Halo 2 hit 6.4 million in sales worldwide today. (This seems silly; the article was posted at 4:30 am PT Thursday, and states that Microsoft ‘said [this] on Thursday’ – hopefully they meant Wednesday, or MS PR folks are working REALLY odd hours.) If this number is accurate, it means that in the two weeks since the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (where Bill Gates touted the 6.3 million units sold at THAT point), only 100,000 units have been sold worldwide… a significant drop in sales rate. Bah. All these numbers are silly. Let’s look again in March, or something.

Gossip tossed us a link to the Amazon Web Services Blog, and an interview with Eric Neustadter, of the Xbox Live team, at the Amazon DevCon. Gossip characterized this as ‘dry’ – I’d have to agree. There ARE some interesting facts in it, though – Xbox Live increased some of its systems by a factor of 10 to accomodate the Halo 2 launch, and bought an additional 32 terabytes of disk space to handle the new stats system. (They’re not using it all yet… but that’s a LOT of space.) There’s also a question about Halo 2 for the PC – Neustadter was asked if there were plans for a PC version that could play with the Xbox version, and his answer was negative:

The security model can’t be expanded to the PC, so it’s unlikely. Nobody has yet to figure out how to do it without punishing existing customers.

(A quick note about that – while we here at bungie.org believe pretty strongly that it’s unlikely that there will ever be a version of Halo 2 for the PC – that’s not what this question was about; this was about the interoperability of a potential PC version and the existing Xbox version. Nobody at Microsoft, or Bungie, has ever made a definitive statement, either way, about the future possibilities for a PC version.)

Apparently, you can look at the Master Chief while preparing to play Half-Life 2 – there’s a Halo 2 skin for Steam. (A screenshot is here.) Thanks, Samir Patel.

Stuntmutt has put up a new batch of Guest One One Se7en strips on his blog – if you feel like you’re not getting enough corn with the 3-a-week diet here, go visit and see what others are creating! (He also whipped out a nice ‘thank-you’ post to Zzombie13, the guest artist who helped out with Monday’s strip. I’d agree with him about the man’s talent.)

Whoa. Greg Hill and his brothers were visiting Detroit recently, staying close to the Canadian side of town (Windsor Canada is right on the other side of the river). He saw a building he HAD to take a picture of. Look familiar? (He made it easy for you, just in case it’s not ringing any bells.)

3Suns noticed a whole bunch of content over at the Geezer Gamers’ site, related to the recent Halo Humpday Challenge they participated in. They’re all linked from the current front page, but in case things change, here’s what we’ve got:

• Bungie Challenge: Geezer Point of View
• Video from the Humpday Challenge (great stuff – but the big one is REALLY big)
• Geezers Take On Bungie – Humpday Challenge
• Geezer Spotlight Part 1 on Monk
• Geezer Spotlight Part 2 on Monk
• Geezer Gamers Make it to Bungie.net

Go read, go watch – good stuff all around! Update Whoops! almost before I got the thing posted, the video’s been pulled. 🙁 Sorry, folks. Go read the rest of the stuff.

Gamefly, a video game rental company, has posted the top video game rentals for 2004 – Halo 2 was 4th, following Ninja Gaiden (released March 2), Grand Theft Auto (released October 25), and Fable (released September 14). They’re also taking votes for your favorite games for the 2nd Annual Q Awards (you have to join GameFly to vote – free); votes will be accepted until January 31.

Weird – Halo 2 had fallen off the charts in the UK, according to ELSPA (the marketing firm who keeps track of game sales there) – but this week jumped from 27th to 13th, as described by PC Pro. Wonder what caused the surge?

Xtournaments has opened neXtournaments, a site devoted to online Halo 2 tournaments held over XBConnect. There are two types of tourneys – one is free, the other has an entrance fee (but also cash prizes). Go read more details on either website! Thanks, Sick Vic.

Namemad whipped up a Flash-based stop-motion vid showing the MC bustin’ some moves to Jay-Z and Linkin Park. Get down.

The HBO Lekgolos clan is on a movie-making tear; in short order, two films have popped up. The first was done by Arashi90 and Blackstar, and features nice gameplay, awesome production values, and crystal-clear video; it’s a blood-pumper to get people interested in playing this clan. It’s being hosted by both KP’s Boomerica.com and Verdafolio’s DementedPuppy.com. 36.6 mb, just under 2 minutes. The second was done by WhoKnew, of DementedPuppy, and is a bit rougher; it contains tricking footage, solo footage, cutscene footage, and regular multiplayer gameplay, all set to AC/DC’s Show Business. Quality is… lower than the first one. 28.6 mb, almost 5 minutes long, QuickTime. This one is available at DementedPuppy.com, as well (and comments can go in this forum thread). Go watch!

We’d like to point out that today’s One One Se7en in no way represents the actual actions or activities of anyone here at HBO.

There are a couple of upcoming events at the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame at Seattle Center of interest to Halo fans; both involve author Eric Nylund. On January 25th (that’s next Tuesday), at 7 pm, he’ll be reading and signing books with his wife, Syne Mitchell. Admission is free. In February and March, there is a 2-part Workshop on Video Game Story Design – and the March session will be taught by Nylund. (Cost per session is $25 for members, $30 for non-members, and seems to be open only to students in grades 9-12.) More details, including location, registration materials, and the like, can be found at the links. If you’re in Seattle, these are pretty unique opportunities!

22 new stories in the Fan Fiction section today. Old faces, new faces… they’re all writing. Go read.

Another IGN article – their 2004 Readers’ Choice results are up. The fans picked the same things that the editors picked, with one Halo-related exception; Bungie.net lost out to Fable for ‘Most Innovative Design’. Thanks again, John Rivas. Update: Alerus points out that there was one other change with respect to the Editors’ awards; the readers felt that Best Graphics should go to Halo 2, not DOA Ultimate.

Tons of articles out there right now about the NPD 2004 numbers (the NPD Group keeps track of gaming sales, and yesterday released their top 10 game sellers in 2004 list) – first one I saw (and one with a nice Halo slant, to boot) was at MLGPro.com; thanks, Dolbex. Halo 2 sold more units than any other game in the US except Grand Theft Auto (which had almost a month’s head-start on sales for the year). What’s really interesting is that the FIRST Halo is still on the top 10 list – over 1.1 million units sold in the US. Wow. If you can’t get enough of the number-crunching, there are articles at Gamespot, IGN, TeamXbox (thanks, John Rivas), and The Seattle Times. I’m sure there’ll be dozens more as the day goes on – but we’ll stick with these.

mrsmiley and Master Chief headed to New York recently for a holiday… and came back with pictures. Just thinking about what was needed for the photography should bring a smile to your face.

Seiru found a mini Master Chief game at Crimson Edge – it’s only in the very beginning stages, but it looks pretty nice! Check it out.

There’s a new ‘Sniping Locations FAQ‘ over at IGN, discussing sniping on Coagulation. Comes with a bunch of ‘rules’, too. And a warning that XBL sucks.

Speaking of HALOChat and movies… the recent release of Stryke Force’s second episode now has a QuickTime version; HALOChat has offered the bandwith to host the version we re-encoded (15.3 mb). (He warns people not to try and use download accelerators; you won’t get a useable file if you do.) Gotta love this community!