Max "Yeroen" Hoberman, one of the longest-serving Bungie employees, is founding a new games development company, Certain Affinity. The CA team of developers in Austin, Texas, including other Bungie alumni such as David Bowman and Chad "Shishka" Armstrong are already hard at work on new maps for Halo 2. Bungie.net has the lowdown in an interview with Frankie. The CA site has the official press release, as well as a note that they're looking for an environment artist.

In addition to the text-only transcript of the dialogue and events in the CGTV ad from yesterday, and a preliminary commentary piece (which has already gone through several revisions) offering interpretations of the content in the ad, I've posted a frame-by-frame analysis with screen captures, taken from the QuickTime HD version posted by Louis Wu at HBO from the original file at TeamXbox.

The fan community switched into high gear this evening as the Halo 3 CG TV Commercial aired, and digitized versions began popping up immediately.

One of the first is a very small, relatively low quality WMV version kindly provided by HYB.

Next, Xbox.com had its own streamed version, but as it doesn't play on Macs I couldn't really check it out. The last version of WMP on the Mac won't play it, the WMV player plugin for QuickTime won't play it. VLC played it, but only the audio, and MPlayer didn't even manage that.

Retsamolah put up a high quality QuickTime version at Moosiah Films, while Plasmafire put up a large MPEG.

Lord Gideon provided a higher quality WMV version as well, clocking in at a tad under 10Mb on the PraetoriaGuard site.

Funkmon linked to a version preconverted for use on portable devices at HaloPortable.com.

Mirrored here at Rampancy:

• QuickTime by Retsamolah
• WMV version by HYB
• iPod version by Funkmon
• Zune version by Funkmon
• PSP version by Funkmon

Moosiah Films also has a page with a list of mirrors including other versions as well.

TeamXbox has a Halo 3 Commercial Page that links to 640 x 360 standard definition and 1280 x 720 high definition versions, both WMV.

Okay, so right now, if you're a US or Canadian resident with an XBL account linked to a Passport account and you use Internet Explorer 6 on Windows (or can create a configuration that mimics the above) you can access www.halo3.com and begin the signup process for the beta.

Along the way, you'll be told that you have to be 18, you have to be a US resident, and if selected you have to have an Xbox Live Gold account and an Xbox 360 with the hard drive.

With all that in place, you may get as far as entering the year of your birth before you get a page that is blank except for a footer. Some users report having reached a final registration page with personal information (name, address) but at the moment, it seems tough to get to.

Some forums and news stories are reporting direct links to the registration page, but KP at Bungie.net warns that you should only access the site through the www.halo3.com domain if you want to be sure your registration goes through.

What I find most interesting about the requirements is the hard drive. Microsoft's strategy with the two-SKU system on the 360 seemed to be that not everybody needed the hard drive, so developers could not count on it. Halo 1 and 2, emulated on the Xbox, require the hard drive because the original games, on the Xbox, were designed with it in mind. Besides, backwards compatibility on the 360 also requires the hard drive.

Is the hard drive requirement here something special, as part of the beta? Or is it a hint that Halo 3 will require the premium Xbox 360 SKU, and that Core owners will have to upgrade to play?

[image:43093 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] Halo fans will be reaching for their remote controls this evening as they get ready to watch the first television advertisement for Halo 3 tonight during Monday Night Football in the U.S.

The commercial was created by Digital Domain using some of Bungie's models for Halo 3, but unlike most promotional materials for the Halo series to date, is not actually rendered in the game's engine and is not intended to be representative of gameplay.

I can't see any official confirmation of this from Bungie yet, but it appears as if Microsoft sent out a press release that says there'll be signups for the public beta of Halo 3 multiplayer on Xbox Live, and that the signup form will be at www.halo3.com. At least, so says Kotaku, Techspot, Playfuls.com, PlanetXbox360, and, of course, HBO.

Bungie.net only says that the CGTV ad will be out on Monday, along with possibly some "beta news". They do say, however, that the beta will be available in the US, Europe, and elsewhere, and that the TV commercial will be downloadable from the Xbox Live Marketplace, in 720p, sometime after the broadcast.

Take it with a grain of salt for the moment, but here's hoping.

Damn, now I need an Xbox 360.

Spartan Jag got matched up with a bunch of quitters in Team Slayer on Xbox Live, but came away with a heartwarming tale of good sportsmanship and good manners involving a group not unknown to HBO's readers-- the Tied The Leader Gunslingers. A good read, check it out.

Also be sure to check out TTL, according to HBO they've got a lot of new content.