rumor

Bungie restarted the delayed countdown from this year's E3 with the Superintendent urging everyone to stay calm and keep clean-- at least until about seven minutes from now. Images on the intertubes (thanks Veegie) suggest perhaps something as dramatic as a trailer for a brand-new Bungie game.

Looks like the Superintendent is back. Perhaps one (or more) of the Bungie announcements that were indefinitely postponed at this year's E3 are about to be made public.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun thinks that a Halo MMO might be coming. Writer Jim Rossignol comes up with a laundry list of reasons why, some of which I don't find entirely convincing.

I'd probably play it if they made it, though. I originally thought Halo-- the first game-- would be something like PlanetSide. It'd be nice to finally see a game like that in a universe as compelling as Halo's.

The rumor mill is working overtime as this year's scaled-down E3 approaches.

The latest comes from "sources" who are reporting to GameSpot's Rumor Control column that Bungie will announce a new, "grittier" Halo universe game: a squad-based shooter that follows a group of ODSTs and doesn't feature the series' iconic Spartan warrior, the Master Chief.

GameSpot's rumor control columnist is calling this rumor "certainly not bogus". Let's wait and find out.

There are ways in which this is certainly a safe path for Microsoft to take with the property. They are staying mostly within the same genre that Halo fans are familiar with. They'd be giving the Cortana/Master Chief pairing a must-deserved rest, perhaps avoiding both story inconsistencies and franchise fatigue. They'd also be expanding on part of the Haloverse that many fans would like to see more of.

Make it an online shooter with a persistent world, like PlanetSide, and you'd likely have me hooked.

...or is Sarcastic Gamer just happy to see you? More of you than they can handle, apparently, since the site is no longer accessible, leading me to depend on a report from Kotaku that the site, along with CVG, is citing the usual "sources" that a new Halo game will be announced at E3. Halo Chronicles? Halo 4? Lego Halo? Nothing at all? Time will tell.

UPDATE: This one continues to make the rounds: ActionTrip, Fragland, Xbox360FanBoy, and NeoGAF. The last seems to focus more on the "Superintendent" image and a possible non-Halo title.

UPDATE: I couldn't open SarcasticGamer when I posted this item, but it is visible now, and the editor assures us below that the site has been running the entire time. Specifically, the site claims Halo 4 will be announced at E3, and they've added a link to the story at CVG as corroboration of their original claim.

Apparently some readers disbelieve the rumor because it's "too early" for the announcement of another Halo game. SG replies that there's a difference between announcing game development and announcing a release date-- but in this case it really may be too early, as Halo 3 wasn't announced until 18 months after the release of Halo 2, and the release of Halo 3 was only nine months ago. Unless this game is really a content release for the Halo 3 engine, or Bungie has magically figured out a way to halve its development time for Halo games (three years per game, give or take) it means that the wait for Halo 4 will seem even longer.

Kotaku reader frostcircus sent in an excerpt from what purports to be a marketing survey regarding possible future Halo titles. It's unclear to me whether this is something a marketing company prepared at Microsoft's request, or something they did independently to gather market intelligence, or what.

If the former, it may mean Microsoft is seriously gauging the potential of further expansion of the Halo universe after Halo Wars and Halo Chronicles. If the latter, it may mean nothing.

Can Lego Halo, an April Fool's joke this year from 1Up, be that far removed from at least potential reality?

hello all Donnie Darko fans,

I was recently watching Donnie Darko and i relised that Frank the bunnym looks alot like Ling-Ling on the Halo 2 Zanzibar easter egg (see my previous blogs for that). The sign says "Are you seeing ling-Ling's head?" and in the new movie from the director of Donnie Darko, which is called SouthLand Tales, and is very confusing, i would recemmound seeing. There is pitures of Franks head all over "DeepThroats" hideout. This all probly means nothing, but Bungie, being the sneaky b-astards they are, probly did it some how. Pleas feel free to comment and give your say on this matter.

Skull-Seeker 4 life!!!...

Im doing this at school again, lol

Skull here,

I was just reading some REALLY old blogs and i keep hearing about a Golden Warthog on Headlong, Im asking no Guests, im only asking Pro Players, IS THERE A GOLDEN WARTHOG, IF SO, HOW DO I GET TO THE ANNOYING THING. Also, i would like to know about H2 to Forge, ive heard rumors about people playing on levels that have be messed, my best friends got a mod chip but we dont know how to do anything good, other than download games and crap like that.Hoping for some answers!!!

Skull-Seeker 4 life!!

Hey all Halo fans,

I was just wondering if any 1 had any REAL information on halo 4, if halo 4 is halo wars (which i cant to come out) then halo 5. I would SOOOOOO read the books but i cant find them anywere. Im just hopin for some info, thanx.

Skull-Seeker 4 life...

Hoping 4 some answers...

This is my first post on rampancy, though I've been a long time fan of the website, I just recently created an account. One thing on my mind, is that I've been wondering what Bungie's next project will be. I'm sure loads of people are wondering. When Frankie was asked if Halo 3 would be the end of the Halo story, he was quoted saying "It will end this story arc." But what does that mean? Will there be a new game with the Master Chief? They can't just leave Master Chief floating in space can they?

Another option I was wondering about is whether they will bring Marathon back. Personally, I would love to see that happen. A Marathon game that feels like Halo.

Discuss.

Most people long since acceded that Halo 3 would sell well, and it has. The big question for the platform, though, was whether it could move consoles; whether it could take back some of the ground gained by the Nintendo Wii since it launched last year, as well as ensure they'd stay ahead of Sony's lackluster PlayStation 3.

Early indications are that the answer to that might be "yes".

Spong is reporting that Chart-Track, a market statistics aggregator, says that during Halo 3's launch week Xbox 360 sales doubled compared to the previous week. Even more unexpected, Halo 3 topped the Japanese software charts, which perhaps goes to show that there's nothing out there for the Wii that people don't already have, and just plain nothing out for the PS3 yet.

This is the most definitive link I can find for what is so far a non-story story about Microsoft somehow letting Bungie become independent again.

The official Microsoft response to reports in Jacob Metcalf's blog that allege Bungie is leaving Microsoft was:

There's been no such announcement.

That's the kind of non-denial denial you'd expect from a company that is the subject of so many non-story stories.

Todd Bishop, on his Seattle Intelligencer blog, gets Robbie Bach at Microsoft to comment on that non-denial denial, and ends up getting an explanation of why the non-denial denial exists:

"The problem is, I can't comment one way or another on any of these rumors. Because then, every time you ask me a question about a rumor, I have to comment definitively, and there's times when I don't want to, and times when I do want to. I just don't. You should interpret it that way. You should interpret it as a neutral 'don't.' "

All in all, it seems very likely that people in Bungie might want to, you know, work on a game that isn't Halo, or isn't a shooter, or, God forbid, isn't a Halo shooter. Farming out Halo Wars to Ensemble and Halo Chronicles to Wingnut seemed to me like Microsoft setting up the Halo franchise to continue while Bungie moved on to other things; but perhaps it was just a move to try and maximize the revenue from the Halo property by developing ancillary products with a series of Halo shooters at the center, developed by Bungie.

 Click here for the complete text.

The Wideload reports on an IRC chat with Wideload Games' Matt Soell; he says that things at the Load have been busy, but that fans can expect some developments Soon™.

PlanetXbox, among others, is tracking forum posts from Halo 3 players who say they're having some disc error messages as well as some freezes; there's also a known issue where transferring a hard drive to another console will prevent you from using the "resume" feature to play from where you left off (although unlocked levels/checkpoints are accessible).

GameGuru interviews Mohit Anand of Xbox India, who makes some pretty ludicrous sounding sales claims for Xbox 360:

GG: How is the Xbox 360 currently doing in India?

MA: Good question! As per your survey, all of us would be out of our jobs. Your survey says 1500-1600 units. If that were the units that we sold, I guess we’d all be out of our jobs. We don’t disclose figures on a nationwide or a region wide basis. All we can say is that worldwide were are now close to 16 million units sold, which is more than all of the other next-gen consoles that have been launched today.

That's funny, since the last claim from Microsoft I saw was around 12 million consoles worldwide, 4 million short of the 16 Anand claims. Plus, you have only check the night map on the Halo 3 page at Bungie.net to notice that however many Xbox 360 consoles there are in India, there are precious few of them online in Halo 3. Not even 1500-1600; at the moment of this writing, there are none showing.