Nate Birkholz airs his views on the situation between Bungie and Microsoft in a MacCentral article called Game Guru: Reflections on Bungie and Microsoft. Here’s a great quote:

Large publishers are, by nature, somewhat conservative, and they prefer to maintain a healthy measure of control. Most developers hear at first that things aren’t going to change, but then the corporate babysitters, excuse me, “representatives” show up, and things start a slow slide. Other developers have successfully resisted the tides of change in similar situations, but it is exceedingly difficult. As a friend of mine at another company said months after his company were acquired by a large publisher, “My wife said she liked me just the way I was at first, and that she wouldn’t try to change me; next thing I know I don’t have season tickets to the hockey games anymore, but I do go to the symphony a lot, and my Camaro became a minivan.”

The article is well balanced though with some serious comments about Microsoft’s role, “killer apps”, the loss of good friends.

More Halo movie mirrors:

3D Action Gamers (Thanks Frans)
Meccaworld (Thanks luxor)
3D Downloads
Stomped
JosephAW’s site 18MB version for 56k users (gone now)

Haven’t grabbed the Halo movie yet? Then never fear Bravehamster is here! Kudos to Bravehamster who sends the following good news:

I brought the E3 halo movie into WMP and managed to get 30+ screenshots taken. Some pretty good ones in there, got all the major points of interest. Anyways, here’s the link, for your readers who don’t have the bandwidth to download the whole movie:

http://www.bravehamster.com/halo/

Nice work. 🙂

Mirror mirror on the net… The E3 Halo movie has appeared on the net in a number of locations. Try here for now:

Fileplanet. (Thanks Charles Fitzhugh)
Battleground: Halo (Thanks Bounty)
Halo Vault (Thanks luxor)
Halo Center (Thanks Yrro)

More as we get them.

Some good stuff going down over at the Marathon’s Story page. A review of Iain M. Banks’ new novel Look To Windward. Halo is clearly influenced by Banks’ scifi novels. There’s also more Halo backstory, some comments on Bungie’s third game Phoenix, the Xbox keyboard or lack of it,the amusing The Official SA Guide to Making a Successful FPS and Marathon pants. Anyone know what the ‘t’ in ‘storytpagepants.html’ URL stands for?

The full E3 Halo movie release confirmed! Thanks to nikozomofor writing to tell us that his issue of PC Gamer (Aug 2000) arrived and the cover CD contained a 160 MB Halo movie (9 mins 42 seconds long).

Seems the Halo-Net Store was laboring under a misimpression… in this forum post, they suggest that the situation might not be as they’d understood it. Bungie licensing still costs money.

According to a Hard|Forum post the full E3 Halo movie has been released. It’s claimed to be 150MBs and 10mins long. HBO staff haven’t been able to verify this yet though.

Matt Soell dropped into our forum to say that he seriously doubts the Halo-Net Store actually has permission to market their products. He’s looking into it… but if you were thinking about buying a sticker today, you might want to hold off a few hours, or until the issue is clarified.

Kudos to Bagman, who found a small article about the XBox controller, posted two weeks before the Bungie/MS deal went public. Seems it’s been known for quite some time that a keyboard will not be a standard feature on the XBox… makes you wonder how Bungie thinks the fan community is going to stay together. (Makes me wonder, too.)

ARMAGEDDON informs us on our forumsthat he has made the Halo scans from PC Gamer (Aug 2000) available on the web at http://armageddon.gamehappy.com/halo/. These scans were originally from the Rampancy.net Hotline server, scanned and upped by Isolder. Thanks ARMAGEDDON and thanks Rampancy.net.

I’m totally unclear on the concept… but it seems a Halo paraphernalia shop has sprung up. The Halo-Net Shop offers… well, nothing at the moment. But you can read about the shirts, stickers, and info packets (?) it WILL have for sale at some point. Seriously bare-bones site, so even if you (as I) don’t get it, you’ll be in and out in a matter of minutes. Check it out!

SETI techs update their team rankings page and the Halo SETI Marines find themselves still holding on to position #46 in the Battle of the Teams.Banzif hits 7777 units and knocks Jjaro tech off the #1 spot. Team membership rises to an all time high of 432 recruits. We need more marines though to replace the combined crunchin’ power of Banzif and Jjaro tech. Join up today for a better future in space.

IGN Xbox have posted an interview with J. Allard, General Manager of Xbox. Allard’s insights into the Xbox are quite revealing. Here’s a piece that caught our attention:

IGN Xbox: So first critics were saying that Microsoft was going to create a mini PC in the living room, and then it switched to a console that crashes. What’s your definition of what makes a console?

JA: You turn it on, and it blows your mind. We’re not confused. It doesn’t boot, there is no install, there are no patches, it’s not an opportunity to port PC games, there’s not a keyboard jack, there’s not a mouse jack. You put it in the living room, you put it in the bedroom, you put it on the biggest TV you’ve in the house and the biggest sound system you’ve got, and you plug in not one, not two but four controllers. You invite your buddies over, and you have the best time you’ve ever had in any form of digital entertainment ever. And you’ll have experiences that you’ll never forget. That’s our focus.

No keyboard, no mouse… thus no means to chat while online.

Not strictly Halo-related… except that its engine is Halo’s. GameSpot posted a tidbit about the game being worked on by The Team Formerly Known As Myth2… “The Phoenix Project.” Interesting little read. Thanks to NexZ, who mentioned it on our forum. Pax.

There’s another IRC channel devoted to Halo… #halo on Irc.EnterTheGame.Com. This is probably the same channel mentioned a couple of days ago in bungie.net’s news… anyone know what network this is? In any case, if you’re looking for a place to hang out and talk Halo, try this one. Pax.

A bunch of scans from the August 2000 PC Gamer have been uploaded to the Rampancy.net Hotline server. (Downloads -> August 2000 PC Gamer) Quality is questionable (as is legality), but the content is very interesting, to say the least.

Seen over at Halo Center: a new French site, Halo Mystic, has come online. The site of the Mystic Angels… take a look!

Daily Radar has an interesting article with Mark Rein, VP of Epic Games, about the future of gaming as he sees it. Apparently, Epic has no plans to move to a console paradigm anytime soon. A pair of intriguing quotes:

We have no problem with people shifting their focus away from the PC or watering their PC product down to the lowest common denominator — it just leaves more opportunity for us!

I can’t see any logical reason why the PC platform is going to be any less vibrant than it is today. I don’t see anything stepping up to the plate to replace the PC I own now or the next one I’m going to buy, or the next one after or the next one after that, or even the next one after that. I think that covers me being a devoted PC user for the next four or five years. So as long as I have a PC that can play games, I’m going to be playing games on my PC. I want a keyboard, I want a mouse, I even want a video camera.

The rest of the article is definitely worth a read. Thanks to Harry Al-Shakarchi for the heads-up.

King of War sends word that GCA (German Cosmonautio Army), a new German Halo clan, is now online. Check ’em out!