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October 5, 2007 Link to this post
Weekly What's Update - Bungie belongs to Bungie
Whoa. Bungie's managed to get the Weekly What's Update up a LOT of hours early; never fear, though, it's not done. As we mentioned on Wednesday, they solicited Halo 3 questions from the community for this one; they'll be posting answers all day long. HOWEVER: that is not the big news in this update. The Big News is that (as the rumors earlier this week suggested) Bungie has become a private entity, no longer owned by Microsoft. Microsoft will still be publishing their games (for now), and they're still working on the 360 platform (for now)... but they're no longer owned by MS. And to that, I say... wonga. (Read the rest of the update, too; those questions that weren't the big news? They're still questions that are puzzling large numbers of fans on the internet, and Bungie's answering lots of them.) A local version of the WWU will be up in our Weekly Update Archive later today, when most of the questions have been fleshed out. Looks like a thread has already kicked off on our forum, if you want to discuss this. Update: For posterity, the official press release is here. Update 2: Marty O'Donnell pointed out that the official Bungie press release is actually more official than the Microsoft press release, given the situation: we've posted a copy of that, as well. Update 3: This has now been added to our Weekly Update Archive. (Louis Wu 15:27:57 UTC)
October 4, 2007 Link to this post
It's all about the numbers.
Maybe I'm just a statistics junkie, but I found this fascinating. Sandvine Network Demographics saw a 100% to 200% increase (that's a doubling or tripling, for those of you who failed 5th grade math) in peak bandwidth of Xbox Live traffic in the week following Halo 3's release. However (and here's the fun part), the number of gamers PRODUCING this traffic remained unchanged from before Halo 3's release. This is in marked contrast to the situation after Gears of War was released; then, an 80% increase in new users was seen. So... most people buying Halo 3 already HAVE a 360? (Remember, there are 12 million of these puppies in the wild. Even if monthly sales double, as they're expected to, that will only add another half a million to the total this month, and a fraction of that in the space of a week... so it's possible that the additional boxes simply aren't showing up in the noise.) And while we're on the subject of statistics, a Microsoft press release announces that Halo 3 has earned $300 million dollars worldwide in its first week's sales. Wonga. (Louis Wu 14:53:07 UTC)
July 31, 2007 Link to this post
Four Player Online Coop Confirmed for Halo 3
Luke Smith confirmed (over on the NeoGAF boards) that online coop for Halo 3 is in, and supports four players. I'd give that a double W00t! and a couple of Wongas! to boot! Thanks, Phatcorns.Update: Luke's also penned a new B.Net article detailing the new hotness that coop is to become. Go read, and learn about a couple of new characters in our Halo universe! (Dang, I better blow the dust off of the ol' Story Page and start updating...) (mnemesis 18:53:47 UTC)
July 30, 2007 Link to this post
Marathon: Durandal release date
DHalo noted on the forum that Marathon: Durandal will become available on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace this Wednesday, August 1st. Wonga! (mnemesis 21:58:25 UTC)
June 28, 2007 Link to this post
Cardboard Mjolnir Armor - Cheap!
DominoEffect noticed a pretty amazing Mjolnir armor costume on the Half-Life Fallout forums; amazing because it's all made of cardboard (with some paint and LEDs) and the total cost is about $26. For anyone who's dying for a cool Halloween costume - this guy shows it can be done in a few days, with stuff most of us have around the house. Wonga! (Louis Wu 18:33:55 UTC)
May 10, 2007 Link to this post
4 million in NA alone? Wonga.
I'm not sure I like the fact-checking ("five different Greater Cincinnati Gamestop locations'?), but the numbers are pretty amazing - according to Xbox Evolved, Gamestop is reporting that they've already taken 4 million preorders for Halo 3 (at Gamestop, EB Games, and Funcoland stores). If this is true... that's a lot of copies. Thanks to Major Winkey for the heads-up. Update: Okay, at the prompting of Kyle Carmitchel, I did a little research... and this seems really, really, unlikely. According to Gamestop themselves, they operate 4,066 stores in North America - to hit that 4 million mark, these stores would have to AVERAGE 1,000 preorders each. In what I'll freely admit is a totally unscientific study, I called the 6 Gamestops within 25 miles of my home, and asked 1) how many preorders they had already for Halo 3, and 2) how this number ranked in that store's preorder history. Answers ranged from a bit over 100 to just over 200 for question 1, and "near the top" for every store for question 2. It's popular, folks... but 4 million North American preorders is not a reasonable estimate. (Louis Wu 14:04:07 UTC)
April 29, 2007 Link to this post
Gorgeous Halo Artwork accompanies Halo Music
Okay, so here's the deal. I'm home from a week in pretty remote rainforests - but there's no time to actually catch up on Halo news. (This would be a good time to pass along a HUGE thank you to the b.orgers who covered the Halo community this past week - they made it possible to relax, a wonderful thing.) Before I vanish for the day, however, there IS one bit of news I'd like to post. You might remember news of a band called The Unchosen, whose 'Mjolnir Song' was heavily inspired by Halo - in fact, they've entered the song in the 'Top of the Ox' competition, and you can vote for it if you like. Well, this week, we got mail from Paul Davies, containing three new (gorgeous) pieces of Halo artwork, all three of which were commissioned by the band for a track they're working on right now; it's not clear whether it's this same song or a new one, but you can thank them either way for the fantastic new artwork Paul created for them. Check out Chief, Chief/Cortana, and Halo Inlay. Wonga! (Louis Wu 17:37:53 UTC)
April 11, 2007 Link to this post
New Map Shots from CA
Wonga. Certain Affinity has posted a large batch of screenshots and concept artwork for Tombstone and Desolation (and there's more if you poke around... at least until they decide to close off directory browsing - thanks, MasterChief2829 and pillar of awesome). Gorgeous stuff - and you can get a really good sense for how they've laid these two levels out! Only a few more days until we can play them ourselves... Update: Heh - directory browsing turned off now. Sorry. (That took less than 15 minutes...) Update 2: I was going to leave this on the forum, but it seems a lot of people are interested. With Shishka's blessing, I mirrored the content on the CA server; you can see the pictures on the pages they've got up, but also a few that AREN'T there. This is everything that was available before directory browsing was disabled. (Louis Wu 17:45:49 UTC)
March 17, 2007 Link to this post
Oh em gee - no debug stuff
The Bungie Weekly Update is up - droolworthy gameplay description, VERY good news about the Legendary/Limited confusion (see an earlier post), AI and vehicle tidbits, a reminder to archive your Group data because the new website launches next week, and a Crate Gun... wonga. Go read. (Of course, it's always available in the Weekly Update Archive, as well...) Frankie, as is almost always the case, was Frist. (Bill Frist.) Sketch was second, and third (and read this, too). (Louis Wu 00:24:59 UTC)
September 24, 2006 Link to this post
More to see than can ever be seen.
Wonga. Someone synched the song 'Circle of Life', from the Lion King, to the video from the Halo 3 trailer. The amazing part... it works! Go watch at YouTube. Thanks, Retsof-Noraa, for the heads-up. (Louis Wu 21:33:04 UTC)
August 22, 2006 Link to this post
Team Carnage - Love it or Hate it
Team Carnage, the newest XBL playlist, is now online. You can read a description of all games in the list on Bungie.net - but a short synopsis might be 'anti-hardcore'. These games are for fun; if you try and play them as though you were playing Team Hardcore, you're going to get frustrated. (The funniest part is that this playlist subbed in for Rumble Hardcore - so a lot of the first players were looking for Rumble Hardcore games, but hadn't turned their Xboxes off or signed out of XBL. The words they used to describe what they were playing are NOT front-page-acceptable.) HBO feedback is coming into this forum thread - lots of people seem to think it's just like Team ActionSack. It's not, really - it's what ActionSack SHOULD have been. Go blow someone up. (Louis Wu 18:15:55 UTC)
August 22, 2006 Link to this post
VOTING NEEDED NOW
Wonga - here's your chance to see Red vs Blue featured on the BBC website! I just noticed a poll on this page (it's about halfway down) pointing out that there are 4 sessions at the Edinburgh Games Festival that can be covered, but only one reviewer - so it's up to the readers to decide which session he attends! Vote for 'Machinima', and you'll get to read a feature of the RT crew. Hurry! (Louis Wu 03:51:18 UTC)
July 27, 2006 Link to this post
I bet you could pull a chapter with that thing.
Wonga - very cool tow hitch from Mrs. Doublefire... check it out! (Louis Wu 00:47:15 UTC)
July 25, 2006 Link to this post
Project BlueStreak - a boon for modellers
Whoa. TheGhost has created a new tool to 'bridge the gap between 3ds max and Halo' - basically, it's a series of scripts that allows for easy (REALLY easy) imports and exports of Halo models and animations. Project BlueStreak has a site page up - the first released script is the GBXModel Importer. In TheGhost's words: "Basically what it does is reads any exported model tag from HaloCE (which can be accessed with the HEK or some sort of tag extractor) and re-creates the tag in 3ds max." Wonga. A thread's been started on the Gearbox forums for feedback and bug reports - check this out! Update: TheGhost has put together a quick 5-minute tutorial (9 MB, 800x600 .wmv) on how to use the script to import a rigged and textured Ghost model into 3ds max - if you'reunfamiliar with 3ds max and maxscripts, this can show you what the script does. Check it out! (You must watch this on a PC; the encoding is not Mac-friendly.) Update 2: for anyone (like me) who was having trouble viewing the tutorial in
WMV format, TheGhost went to the trouble of creating a Flash version. Beautiful! (Louis Wu 11:16:19 UTC)
May 28, 2006 Link to this post
Playing for Time
According to sawnose (a Bungie.net superuser), yesterday afternoon saw a pretty impressive milestone passed on Xbox Live - 3,333,333,333 player-games recorded. (A player-game is one game played by one player - so a head-to-head match would count as 2 player-games, while a full 6v6 match would be 12 player-games.) 3.3 BILLION player-games... at let's say about 10 minutes each... that's more than 60,000 player-years of gametime on XBL, playing Halo 2. Wonga! Thanks to all who let us know - looks like Masta Chef was first. (Louis Wu 15:02:12 UTC)
May 10, 2006 Link to this post
Screenshots for the BIG screen.
So... if you like the screenshots over at Bungie.net, but feel like they're not hi-res enough (they're only 1280x720, after all), or you're unhappy with the Bungie watermark... swing by the Xbox.com Press site, and grab the official press screenshots (70 mb, zipped). What do you get for those 70 megs? You get the 5 images in uncompressed TIFF format - 10-16 mb each - at the absurd resolution of 6400x3600. Wonga. (Louis Wu 13:28:35 UTC)
May 9, 2006 Link to this post
Content for EVERYONE
Swing by Bungie.net - now back up, and with a pretty amazing top story. The announcement trailer is available for all - in QT and WMP9 formats (with more options coming soon, looks like) - plus Screenshots, Storyboards, Wallpapers, a new FAQ, an About page, and a new forum. WONGA. Go take it all in. Update: hmm... looks like the non-trailer content isn't actually accessible yet (I just get redirected back to the main page). Patience. :) (The movie links work fine, though.) (Louis Wu 19:57:36 UTC)
April 14, 2006 Link to this post
MS signs on with WCG
The World Cyber Games just got a new sponsor - Microsoft. The pot for 2006 is rather large - half a million dollars. (Last year's pot for the Grand Final was $435,000, so this is a nice
bump.) Some of that extra money is coming from MS - along with all the hardware that the games will be played on (PCs and Xbox360s). Seems like Halo won't feel like so much of an afterthought any more... Update: Wonga. I'd forgotten that Halo isn't even being played this year. Thanks, Dante. (And KP.) OUCH! (Louis Wu 16:16:12 UTC)
March 23, 2006 Link to this post
77 Minutes. OMG.
Wonga. So there's a project over at High Speed Halo to complete Halo (the first one) in 77 minutes - and they're currently 6 seconds from that goal. I have no doubt that once it's completed, they'll work to bring every difficulty level up to Legendary - but for now, the whole concept of finishing the entire game in an hour and 17 minutes at ANY difficulty level blows me away. Thanks, HIH. (Louis Wu 15:37:18 UTC)
February 15, 2006 Link to this post
The 2006 Winter Halolympics
Wonga. Over at Tied The Leader, XerxdeeJ has a story up about the Halolympics, a multi-game Halo tournament being conducted online right now. (CobaltNova has even set up a website for it all - 19 days of gaming, and you can join in!) Thanks to 3Suns for letting us know this morning - too bad it's been such a busy day! Update: Eep - turns out the invitation to participate is for clanmembers only; you're welcome to join their clan, I suppose, but you can't sign up for the games unless you're a Gunslinger. Thanks to CobaltNova for the clarification. (Louis Wu 22:24:11 UTC)
January 12, 2006 Link to this post
Horde Boosting, Indeed.
The guy doesn't stop. More megabattle goodness from rockslider over at Bad Cyborg - bump the total number of enemies to about 50! Wonga. (Louis Wu 21:53:53 UTC)
January 11, 2006 Link to this post
A box I'd definitely buy.
Wonga. X3n0, emboldened by the response to his RvB action figure packaging, released a shot of a case he made for his Active Camo Spartan... and man, does it rock! Check it out. Joyride could learn something from this guy, packaging-wise! (Louis Wu 12:04:17 UTC)
November 5, 2005 Link to this post
It's shorter than the Oscars, I guess.
Wonga. That Weasel has posted a note explaining that the Rockets on Prisoner Awards ceremony is now downloadable. It's... pretty long. Almost an hour and a half long. Downloadable, in either WMP9 format (228 mb) or QuickTime format (291 mb). I tried to watch it... but my QuickTime player crashed. The forum post contains plenty of other links, including text versions of all the winners, if you missed them. (Louis Wu 14:21:07 UTC)
October 25, 2005 Link to this post
Frankie thinks he's Ethan Suplee
Cogent's outage in southern Florida last night (due to Hurricane Wilma, and affecting HBO's datacenter) coincided nicely with the window of opportunity I had for updates yesterday evening - so I couldn't tell you about the new story on Bungie.net, about the followup to the Fight the Flood campaign Bungie ran last month. Thanks to you, the fans, the American Red Cross received a check for over $175,000 from Bungie and Sunrise Identity (the guys who run the Bungie Store) for hurricane relief. Wonga! (Louis Wu 11:20:15 UTC)
September 14, 2005 Link to this post
Making Avatars for Friends
Another avatar from Elnea - a female spartan with a light saber? Wonga. (She says she'll never catch up with the number of pending requests for these, so you might want to re-think sending her your specs.) (Louis Wu 13:40:51 UTC)
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