Something about the shock of the last few days has brought out the writer in several. The Fan Fiction page has been updated with not one, not two, but three new stories… go check ’em out! (Thanks to Vap, Myndreach, and Antares for the submissions.)

Yet another Seropian interview… this time with Gamefan. Not a lot new… but how many times can you say “we think we’re doing the right thing” without sounding repetitive? Thanks to Luxor of Halo Vault for the heads-up.

Shugashack and Daily Radar are both reporting that Eidos is shopping around for a buyer, and Microsoft is high on the list. That monopolistic tendency just won’t settle down, will it? Pax.

Blam!… The Halo SETI Marines scrape into 48th place, despite heavy losses. Banzif and Maxaminus take top honors… but it feels wrong. Check the 24 hour stats.

Just for kicks, we compared our traffic yesterday to a random day last week. Seems like a lot of folks stopped by for the MS news. 🙂

	June 12		June 19
Total Visits	2890		7604
Total Pages	5536		13,252
Total Requests	32,291		77,352
Total Unique Visitors	1754		4491

Robert X. Cringely, a columnist for Oregon Public Broadcasting (and the Public Broadcasting System), wrote an interesting article last year entitled “Be Careful What You Wish For.” It suggests that being acquired by Microsoft is not always what the acquiree thinks it’s going to be; it looks at Hotmail as an example. It’s definitely worth a read by anyone who firmly believes that Microsoft will stay totally hands-off of Bungie. Thanks to Peter Kyme for the heads-up on this one.

Rampancy.net has put up a transcript of last night’s b.net chat with Matt and Max. Some interesting stuff in there… seems like it was a little more freeform than the R.net chat earlier in the evening. A snippet:

Why not commit to games for Mac?
Jones is in charge of Halo, and is only willing to commit to possibilities. There’s still a lot for us to learn, and we don’t like making false promises. As for other games, it’s impossible to say what platforms they’ll be on. We made promises when we believed we were being completely honest. This situation changes the circumstances. At the time we didn’t forsee it.

There’s been an awful lot of ranting on our forum about Bungie’s abandonment of the Mac market… It’s important to remember that Microsoft is not saying “you can’t do a mac version” here.

Halo: Xbox Only? Jason Jones, Bungie’s co-founder and the guiding developer behind Halo,talks about Halo and XBox in a Daily Radar interview. Here’s a snippet:

Daily Radar: What platforms is Halo going to appear on besides the Xbox?

Jason Jones: To be honest, we haven’t decided yet.

Daily Radar: Will it be possible to play multiplayer Halo on the Xbox? How many total players at a time?

Jason Jones: Absolutely, yes. And this isn’t a promise, but I don’t see any reason why the Xbox couldn’t handle as many players in a game as a PC.

Daily Radar: Halo was originally designed to be played on a PC. What have you done to handle the transition to gamepads?

Jason Jones: There are a lot of issues, and we’re nowhere near figuring out all of them, but we’ve been playing net games with Interact’s Hammerhead controller for two weeks now — that’s similar to the PS/2controller: dual analog sticks, six buttons, four triggers, etc. — and it’s going great.

Daily Radar: Will multiplayer Halo only be playable on The Zone?

Jason Jones: Nope. Halo will be playable on bungie.net.

Thanks to Blue’s News for the heads up.

The Mac strikes back! As reported on Mac OS Rumors, Foundation Imaging, the company that did Starship Troopers:Roughneck Chronicles TV show (Sci-Fi 6:30AM CST), is to replace all of their NT rendering machines with G4s. Why? They’re faster. Halo fans will notice the similarity between the Roughneck TV show and Halo. Here’s a few pics from their image gallery:

Marine
Dropship
Flame thrower
Marine group shot
Three marines

Thanks to a kind Hotliner, we’ve added most of what was missing from the R.net chat this evening. Some very interesting questions (and answers) early on… so check it again!

Vincent Lopez, of IGNPC, got a chance to speak to Alex Seropian about the changes. You can find the interview here. (Thanks to Luxor of Halo Vault for pointing it out.)

The Question and Answer session on Rampancy.net’s Hotline server got off to a rocky start, but eventually settled down. We missed the very beginning of the actual questions, but we managed to record a large chunk of the discussion. There are some interesting tidbits in here. Visit irc channel #bungie (on EFNET) for another go-round. Thanks to Max, for his graciousness!

Wow. New screenshot at Blue’s News. Who said Bungie couldn’t do trees?

Rampancy.net’s Hotline server was set to host a Q&A session, but apparently the crowd was too big, so they’ve gone private. Hopefully, the admins will post the information gotten from Matt Soell and Max Hoberman publicly… but before it was shut down, this question was asked and answered:

CyberBob (#4 : Ok first question:
CyberBob (#4 : Mumbles asks:
CyberBob (#4 : “Do you still plan on creating editors for Halo and if so how iwll that work on the X-Box?”
yeroen: Hmmm… we’re not sure if we’ll ship editors if we ship an Xbox version–there are some obvious limitations. However, if we ship a PC/Mac version there will most likely be editors.

Not an outright “yes” or “no”… but info nonetheless.

Massa writes to let us know that Halo Network has an article up, summarizing the situation and adding a bit of analysis. It’s all in German, and Babelfish isn’t being very cooperative with the tokens that HN is using… so you’ll have to read it for yourself.

Other sources today explained that Take 2 got Oni and Myth in exchange for their 19.9% of Bungie. Now, Redherring.com points out that Broadband Sudios, a subsidiary of Take 2, has another connection to the deal. The strategic alliance announced today between Microsoft and Broadband gives Microsoft a ready-made broadband network for upcoming multiplayer Xbox titles… like Halo.

Hamish calls it quits! In a dramatic countup which started early this morning the Story page’s SETI client “Powered by Jjaro tech” clocked up its 7777th SETI units on the very day that the Microsoft-Bungie buyout is announced. Coincidence? We think not. We’ve also learnt that Hamish doesn’t intend to continue crunching SETI units which should be good news for Banzif. The Marathon’s Story page lives on though. This is what the page had to say:

Marathon lives on. And the “heart and soul” of the Marathon’s Story page is not Bungie but its fans. As long as there are fans there will be a Story page. Veritatem Dies Aperit.

Anyone know what that last bit means?

The halobungie.com spoof site went offline earlier today, due to huge bandwidth excesses. The Dukes of Halo movie available there, though, has been mirrored by Halo Center… so swing on by if you haven’t seen it!

GameSpot has put up a news article of the Bungie acquisition, as well as an interesting 4 page interview with Alex Seropian. Absolutely worth a read.

Dear Fans. Bungie posts Letter To Our Fans from Alex and Jason and Acquisition FAQ. Here’s the last part of the letter:

We’re diving into this with our eyes wide open, and are eager to make it succeed. The last seven years have been a real blast. We hope you’ll join us for the next seven, after which we’ll blow up the world.

– Alex and Jason

Thanks to Matt Soell for the heads up in our forums.