Rampancy

Also seen on HBO: tourney writeups by 909 (Plano, Texas) at HBO and Matt Soell (Washington) at Bungie.net. Thanks Louis Wu.

Xbox.ign.com has put up an FAQ page about MS' upcoming Xbox Live online gaming service. One of the most amusting parts of the page is a graphic with a red arrow pointing to the Xbox's ethernet port that is labeled Xbox Live Goes Here . Just in case you weren't sure.

There is one interesting quote about pricing:

Pricing plans beyond the $49.99 for 12 months hasn't been revealed yet by Microsoft. The company is comfortable with a 9.95/month value for the service, but this hasn't been translated into any long term pricing.

Where the comfortable with a 9.95/month value quote comes from isn't stated, so don't bank on it.

There's also this slightly discouraging piece of information:

The gamertag is permanent but there's still the potential for specific in-game handles and nicknames if a company makes a game that supports it. You can sign up for another user ID but that means opening another Xbox Live account to go with it. If you have four Xbox gamers in the house and they each want their own XBL ID then somebody is going to have to spend that $49.99 for each of them.

Here's hoping that they somehow figure out a way to handle multiple gamers on a single Xbox in a single household without depending on game-specific implementations.

Vector40 recently traveled to San Jose for a videogame tournament to be played on an IMAX dome (well, at least the finals) and Halo was one of the included games. While our good friend didn't make it into the finals, he did have quite a dramatic run, and it makes a great read. His description of the final match is particularly entertaining:

They played. They played with skill. However, all the time they were playing, Mr. Pistol was killing them.

It was almost ludicrous. He ate them for lunch. These guys were GREAT, very talented, almost no shortcomings Ч highly skilled, highly trained, well-drilled players who were all worthy of recommendation. They had great moves, and all were excellent with the pistol. And the god barely blinked as he mowed them over.

It's over in the HBO forum, go check it out. Noticed first by Louis Wu at HBO.

Ok, now we've seen it all. Halo 2 is so popular this is the only time we've ever seen sites do previews not for a game, but for a trailer that's not going to be out for another 3 weeks for a game that isn't going to be out for more than a year. It's... astounding.

Nevertheless, IGN has put up its own transcript/preview of the Halo 2 trailer, and it's even more enthusiastic than the others. If your Halo 2 appetite needs any whetting, head on over and take a look.

And take some clean underwear with you, they seem to be in need of some.