[FMJ]Phönix[BP] drops a note on our forum mentioning a new German Halo clan, Full Metal Jacket. They seem to be a Sudden Strike clan with a Halo offshoot… I couldn’t get the provided link to connect me with a Halo page, so here’s a direct link.

Well, it only took 17 months, but it’s finally been confirmed that those little blips in the MWNY 99 Halo trailer WERE natural life, and not glitches in the video – Nathan Bitner, former Halo producer and current head honcho of Island Four Software, stated on our forum

Natural life began to appear in the air with the very first trailer…

One can be seen at about 3:11 in the video, behind the Covenant flyer in the blue sky. Pax.

=NAV= Shadow writes to say that the Clan NAVCON site is getting a redesign, and should be back online sometime in early January. You can see a preview image at the site now. Pax.

Bungie’s on the move! Today’s the day… Bungie’s moving out of their temporary digs in the Encarta building, and over into their posh new Gaming Division offices. A Microsoft employee reports almost being crushed in the elevator by a guy carrying a 6-foot cardboard Trow… (Thanks, Aaron.)

Hamish Sinclair writes to point out that in our holiday preparations, we missed an official reply from Microsoft on the EU Xbox release issue (we mentioned the problem here, but at the time it was a rumor). Late last week, Microsoft issued a statement clarifying the issue – the delay IS real, and the reason IS a supply question. You can read about it over at MSXbox.

eldar-colonel, of Halo Hq, sends along a new desktop for our Wallpaper page. A mixture of the old and the new… Pax.

Our forum has moved – the URL is the same, but the machine upon which it resides is different. This means that until your local DNS catches up with our change, you’ll be seeing the old forum. When you don’t see a “Forum is moving” note on the top, you’ll know you’re looking at the new one. The upgrade to the newest WebBBS has certainly been welcome on the Oni Central forum… I hope it’s as welcome here!

And the SETI Halo Marines make a reappearance! Some weird goings-on, though… although the individual stats are increasing normally, the team numbers haven’t changed an iota in the past 24 hours, making one wonder about the accuracy of the Team Standing values. Nevertheless, the Marines have been valiantly plugging away at incoming data, and whether SETI knows it or not, continues to search for the Covenant! All the details can be found on the 21 day stats page.

M E R R Y    C H R I S T M A S !

From the HBO crew and our families, to you and yours, we wish you the merriest of holiday seasons. Pax.

(We’ll be back updating on Tuesday, the 26th.)

General Cicero says on our forum that the position of Pilot is open under the Staff of Caesar at the Roman Federation, a large Halo army. Stop by or email him for details.

No Halo update this week says Matt on our forums. No Halo update next week too. Doesn’t look like we’ll get one on Friday January 5th either. Matt hints at a possible live Halo update at the Bungie fanfest. Go read his full posthere.

Wow. This blows me away. Xbox 360, an Xbox news site, has recently (December 16, 2000) put up a preview of Halo. Given the date, and the focus of the site, you’d think they had current info, right? You’d be wrong. The few screenshots up are all using the pre-E3 models, the background (while nominally accurate) is all a year or more old… ah, well, to be expected from a review that promises

While no official list of weapons is available, several of them have been seen in action, and yes, one of them is a rocket-launcher.

I’m wondering if this article is a harbinger of a wave of under-researched pieces… was the early press Halo got going to be a hindrance?

Griffon writes to tell us that Halo Command Central will be closing for the holidays. They hope to be back up soon with new features. Have a merry one!

fAt, of MPZ Halo, sends word that FGN Online has an article suggesting that the Xbox will be delayed in Europe for as long as 3 months past the US release. There must be a big router out between FGN and here, because I can’t reach the site at all… but Daily Radar has a similar article, with some US commentary – apparently, the theory is that the delay is specifically to avoid shortage problems like those faced by Sony with its Playstation 2. This doesn’t seem to be affecting the US rollout date, and in fact might even bump it up, now that Microsoft isn’t going to be trying to coordinate a worldwide simultaneous rollout. Since the concern is a hardware shortage, and not a technical glitch, it will likely not affect the PC/Mac versions of Halo, either. Or… at least, that’s OUR guess. (If we’re wrong, we’ll hang Crux by his thumbs, and everyone can take a shot at him.)

If Hamish can do it, so can we. We’ve put up our holiday decorations, in honor of the first day of Winter (in the northern hemisphere, at least). Now I just need to finish hanging those lights on my REAL house…

Heh… seems Matt agreed with my dissatisfaction with the chat… he posted this note a few minutes after it ended. 🙂 More prep next time…

An hour late, but better than never. The log from the IGN chat this evening on IRC has been cleaned up a bit, and formatted for slightly easier reading. The format of the chat left quite a bit to be desired… but there’s some nice info nonetheless. Give it a read… and be ready with your tough questions for the next one!

The Land of the Xbox… where rumors are killed faster than we can propagate them! Monday, Gameweek.com reported that Microsoft might be bumping the processor in the Xbox up to 1 GHz, or even higher. We missed it, until this morning… and now we’ve noticed that Daily Radar contacted MS yesterday, and got a resounding ‘NO!’ in respsonse. The 733 MHz chip is still in the cards. We’ll try to get you the juiciest rumors BEFORE they’ve been debunked next time.

If you can’t invent it yourself, find someone who can. That seems to be the theory behind the wing contrails in this Tribes 2 screenshot… though I think even the July 99 Halo versions were more believable. Thanks to MakeMineRed, for the forum heads-up.