Joystiq spoke to Phil Spencer, general manager of Microsoft Game Studios - Spencer answered a question about the lack of a Bungie announcement at E3 with a description of what WAS focused on (first-party games aimed for a holiday release this year). That suggests that Bungie's announcement was postponed because 1) they're no longer a first-party studio, and/or 2) their material is not ready for release this year. (Thanks, JustyB.) And MTV's Stephen Totilo spoke to Don Mattrick, Senior Vice President of the Interactive Entertainment Business - Mattrick confirmed that Bungie is, indeed, working on a Halo title (one that has NOT been announced before - this is major news by itself) and implied that the lack of a Bungie announcement this week was due to the fact that there was already enough Xbox news coming out of Microsoft. (Thanks, Avateur.) As Narcogen put so wryly over at Rampancy.net - welcome back to independence, Bungie. (That blog post is absolutely worth a read-through for any Bungie fan.) Update: Looks like kapowaz beat Avateur to the punch with the Mattrick article; I missed the timestamp on his post.(Louis Wu 13:38:47 +0000)