I'm not going to make a habit of tracking this, but it's worth noting that COD4's stay atop the Xbox 360 leaderboard has (so far) been brief: Halo 3 is back up on top in the current ratings. These two games might be on a see-saw for awhile.

From its release in 2004, Halo 2 reigned supreme as the top multiplayer game on the Xbox Live service even after the Xbox 360 came out. With no AAA launch titles, the old game ruled the roost until Gears of War was released, which was in turn superseded by Halo 3 late last year.

Halo 3's time in the sun seems destined to be a bit shorter. Faced with stiffer competition than its predecessor, Halo 3 last week was bumped out of the top spot by Infinity Ward's shooter Call of "it's not set in World War Two" Duty 4.

Is this a permanent thing? Will CoD4 stay on top now until a new game bumps it off? Or is this just a wrinkle in XBL players preference? It seems odd that people could tire of Halo 3 so quickly, especially given that there's already been one DLC package out with another coming soon.

jayWHY and EA sent word that the HBO-COERCE Halo PC server is coming back for a special Thanksgiving event. Dust off your Halo PC discs and jump in!

Frag The Cullen forwarded to me a film clip made by Jihaku of a Team Slayer game played a few days ago. In that game, player Geo Stelar seems to have an infinite bag of bubble shields. No matter how many times he deploys it, he always has another, a fact he uses to his advantage in this film. There's also a thread about the alleged exploit at Bungie.net.

It's quite definitely identified as a team slayer game and not a Forge or a Custom film, so that would seem to rule out those ways of altering the behavior of the bubble shield.

Have hackers already been able to modify Halo 3 maps and use those modified maps in matchmaking? Is this a bug in the game? An artifact of extreme lag? The last theory might be the best; the clip author Jihaku seems to die after deploying a bubble shield, but then drops one when he shouldn't have had one. Geo Stelar picks up that bubbleshield, and shortly after realizes that it doesn't disappear from his inventory when deployed.

Once again more news has transpired in 24 hours than I'm able to handle with the individual loving care that each unique-as-in-snowflake bit of news fully deserves to be treated. So sue me.

Here's what happened:

Bungie cheated HBO out of a Humpday win. Makes you wish there was some large company comprised of adults watching over these boys Luke Smith while at play.

Speaking of cheating, NBA player Gilbert Arenas apparently sets up dummy matches of doubles in social slayer and gets the dummy to quit out, leaving him with the victory and the experience points. MC187 sniffed out the method looking at statistics, and the Washington Post got Arenas to admit to it, who arrogantly asserted it wasn't cheating. Bungie, instead of banning him, pointed to Arenas' apparently legitimately high matchmaking skill ranking as proof of the player's ability and ignored the fact that he's manipulating the experience system. So that's it, it's OK to set up fake social games to get free experience points. If you're a famous NBA player who is friends with top MLG teams. Otherwise, don't. You might get banned.

Speaking of HBO, Bungie AI engineer Max Dyckhoff gave an excellent and wide-ranging interview to HBO about exactly how the Saved Films feature works (it is simultaneously both more and less complex than you'd think) as well as how driving AI works (or doesn't).

Frankie pointed out Halolcats, the content of which is pleasantly predictable.

Shacknews interviewed Wideload's Alex Seropian about being an independent game studio.

Those of us steeped in Halo 3 and Bungie Breakaway news might be forgiven momentarily for forgetting that online communities for Bungie's Mac and PC RTS games, Myth, are still hanging in there a decade after the game was released.

Unfortunately one of them, PlayMyth, has now shut down. Server administrator Blades, apparently posting as elusivemind, says he no longer has the time or energy to keep up with it.

Those looking for their online Myth multiplayer fix can still visit Mariusnet, and if you need Myth related files, including updates to Myth 2, visit Project Magma.

Thanks Gholsbane at MBO.

Shishka saved Bungie from humiliating defeat in the first post-launch Halo 3 Humpday, as the boys from Kirkland waded into Social Slayer and got socially slayed.

Check Bungie.net for the full writeup as well as links to the Saved Films; this is the first time we'll be able not just to read about the humpday, or pore over the statistics, but actually see the matches themselves. No more lying embellishment!

The Bungie Store has got the blue filter you can use with Halo 3's video calibrator in stock now. For a limited time, it's free with any other order!

Major Nelson had to take a break from putting up the Live Activity weekly totals for awhile due to Xbox Live maintenance, but the latest list shows Halo 3 in the top Xbox 360 game slot, above Gears of War. Halo 2 retains its spot as the top original Xbox game, ahead of Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, although there is no longer any note about combined lists.

The totals are of "global unique users connected to Xbox Live".

...almost. Demand for the service the day of Halo 3's launch stressed the system to its limits, making it slow or inaccessible for many, according to Next-Generation.

Microsoft labelled Halo 3's launch day as the "most active Xbox Live gaming day in history" after more than a million people had been logged playing Halo 3 online. That may be the case, but there were many others who weren't able to get in on the action.

I'm betting that any part of those problems that isn't solved yet, will be soon; XBL play is too much a part of Microsoft's plans for the platform in general and for Halo 3 in specific for them to continue for long.

Next-Generation has a passel of interesting statistics about the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live-- software sales, subscriber totals, the works-- if you're interested in that kind of thing.