Xbox's Major Nelson asks Do You Skype and reveals his SkypeID, unsurprisingly, is majornelson. (You need your browser configured so that Skype handles callto:// URLs for that link to work --Ed.)

Louis Wu, courtesy of Dan Chosich's tipoff, points us to Gamasutra's freely-availably printer-friendly version of Handling Complexity in the Halo 2 AI, the GDC 2005 presentation by Bungie's Damian Isla. Lots of interesting diagrams.

IGN has an article up entitled Everything You Wanted to Know About the Xbox 2, with nary a mention of Bungie or the Halo series. They believe that MS plans to have as many as 40 titles out within 2-3 months of the new console's launch. (However, there's little doubt that without Bungie's Halo, the original console would not even have fared as well as it did. What is Bungie cooking up for the new box, and when could it possibly be ready? --Ed.)

synide writes at MLG that the finals are now underway; the story has Video On Demand links.

[image:9123 align=left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] Joystiq points to a page at Engadget showing an image that purports to be a leaked picture of Microsoft's upcoming Xbox 2, codenamed "Xenon" but that its sources say is actually a decoy.

Major Nelson, back from GDC, posted up a big guide to Xbox 2 coverage at Xbox.com. Includes screenshots, movies and info.

Slashdot is reporting that Bungie's audio team of C Paul Johnson, Marty O'Donnell, and Jay Weinland won the Best Audio award at GDC 2005 for Halo 2. In most other categories, though, Half-Life 2 stole the show. Thanks Louis Wu.

Fourteen new screenshots for Wideload's upcoming Xbox third-person action game, Stubbs the Zombie in: Rebel Without A Pulse have showed up on stubbsthezombie.com, and were later picked up by GameSpot. There's also a new page of videos showing the game in action on the Stubbs site, and a writeup of what Wideload is showing at GDC at GameSpot.

The Game Developers Conference has kicked off with J. Allard's keynote address, and the web is atwitter with news about Microsoft's next console, despite the machine itself not yet making an appearance. Here are a few links to items floating through the ethernet at the moment:

• Major Nelson has entries in his blog, (keynote kickoff, new UI including screenshots, MP3 podcast of the keynote address and finally a good old-fashioned transcript.)
• AGEIA Technologies announced their NovodeX Physics SDK for the new Xbox console.
• Xbox Live will be integrated even more tightly into the new box according to Joystiq, which is still using the Xbox 360 logo with stories even as it touts that "Xbox Next" seems to be the official moniker, at least according to some PowerPoint slides they've seen. They've also got show floor pictures.
• Lists of Xbox 2's features, including the emphasis on High Definition TV, at Eurogamer, Xbox365, SPOnG and GameSpy (second of two parts, as mentioned yesterday) and Voodoo Extreme, which apparently got it before the address from a leaked press release.

James "Fiend" Schneider of Major League Gaming has interviewed Alfonso "AYB Fonzi" Chartier. Fonzi and his teammates came to the fore with the launch of Halo 2. Thanks Dolbex.

More Xbox 2 specs, this time from GDC through GameSpy via Voodoo Extreme. The upshot? A triple-cored PPC, 256Mb of total memory, optional hard drive, 720p standard output and a new 500Mhz GPU. Yowza. Apparently part 2 of this series is due tomorrow.

In other news:

• Halo inducted into the Walk of Game; thanks Frankie.
• The usual mega-sized fan art update today at Halo Babies. Thanks mrsmiley.
• Mike Miller only has a few regrets about the latest part of his Halo 2 Legendary Walkthrough-- most of them have to do with boss battles... thanks Louis Wu.
• More Xbox 2 "Xenon" coverage from SPOnG: one, two.

Just as other sites (DailyGame, TeamXbox, SPOnG) are picking up the same rumor promulgated by a quote of Microsoft's J. Allard in a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article we heard about from HBO, Louis Wu lets us know that Bungie has deflated the tires on this one: Bungie is not increasing its staff any time soon.

Other news of note:

• First Halo 2 Championship in the UK
• Major Nelson: This is not the next Xbox
• Microsoft to give Japanese developers free rei: Eurogamer
• Another interview with Brian "SketchFactor" Jarrard from his tour of Asia; thanks again Louis Wu.

Microsoft's J. Allard commented rather off-handedly, in an article about the size of Microsoft Game Studios, that Bungie will double in size (currently 65 people) in order to work on the "next installment" of Halo. Thanks Louis Wu at HBO. (Remember, though, Allard isn't technically Bungie, even if Bungie is technically Microsoft --Ed.)

[image:9096 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]Only slightly more than three years have passed since the Xbox brought Microsoft into the console wars, and the next generation, if rumors are to be believed, will be upon us by the 2005 holiday season. Ahh.. Xbox. A console of infinite games... assuming they're all made by Bungie.

Here's a look at recent items about upcoming consoles, as well as goings-on in the Bungieverse:

• Xbox might have a removable hard drive as an option that could double as a music player.
• News.com put up a FAQ about the next-gen hardware.
• DigiTimes interviewed Brian "SketchFactor" Jarrard, who admitted that Bungie "developed some games" before Halo, but "most of them were not successful." (Ouch! I seem to recall-- no pun intended-- the award-winning Myth and Marathon series, but nevermind--Ed.)
• Blackstar notes the Hurt, Agony, Pain video he did with Arashi for HBO Lekgolos, lovingly hosted by Nof at Enraged Creations.
• Start of a new mini-series at Halo Babies that explores Bungie's various penchants.
• Frankie dishes some more details (but not too many) on what Bungie is doing to counter glitchers and cheaters. Looks like about a month (but maybe more) before solutions are forthcoming. (And don't forget MonkeyChief.
• Bungie.net also has a new top story about the use of the Havok physics engine in Halo 2.
• Bungie loses another Humpday Challenge, but this one is understandable: their opponent was the US Army.
• MLG notes the Best Gamer on Campus competition.

Frankie has clarified his post from yesterday: there'll be "plenty of warning" before Halo 2 downloadable content is available. It's not going to be today and you shouldn't hold your breath and there'll be no more comments by Frankie on HBO, you insensitive clods!