There are other stories on the PC held by MS at E3 (everybody with us so far?) at HomeLAN Fed, TeamXbox and Eurogamer.

Reuters has reported that Microsoft's Home and Entertainment division, which produces the Xbox and contains developers like Bungie Studios and others that make games for it, lost $190 million USD in Q3 2002, which ended on March 31. This compares to a loss of $97 M in the same quarter the year before. Quarterly revnue was nearly cut in half, dropping from $943 M to $493 M.

BusinessWeek Online has a story where author Andrew Bunnie Huang claims to have pre-sold over 400 copies of his controversial, as-yet-to-be-published title Hacking the Xbox: an Introduction to Reverse Engineering . Huang is self-publishing the volume on May 27.

In the Reuters Technology section on Yahoo News, there's a story summarizing the events of Microsoft's press conference at E3, and it does, of course, mention the Halo 2 demonstration.

In other news, it mentions that Electronic Arts is poised to announce that it isn't going to put any of its sports titles on Xbox Live, seeming to mean that what was once a spat has escalated into a boycott. Although reportedly still talking to [EA] about it, Microsoft countered by announcing XSN , a new brand name for its own line of sports games, to be complete with virtual teams and leagues through XBL.

MS also announced some improvements to XBL itself, including a voice-based chat room.

Not to be outdone, IGN also has some new Halo 2 stuff up-- thanks to Louis Wu at HBO, where we noticed the news. Their full trailer footage, like GameSpot's, are for paying subscribers only, but they have some free teaser clips. They also have the same screenshots as GameSpot, but without watermarks. Then, of course, they have their own trailer impressions.

GamerFeed has their reaction to the press conference as well.

Also, it has become apparent that the trailers and teasers that both sites have for their members may or may not have been authorized by Bungie. FYI.

gamer90 over at Subnova pointed out some recent Halo 2 items at GameSpot, including two new trailers, six new screenshots, and a new preview article. Enjoy.

A PlayStation emulator called PCSX has been ported to the Xbox, allowing owners of modchipped Xboxes to play PSX games that have been ripped to their Xbox hard drives. The story is at Slashdot.

Raptorv22 wrote in to let us know that the first Halo 2 clan (at least that we knew of) has now opened its doors: the 67th Raptors. Go take a look.

In the forums at HBO and Subnova lately, there's been much attention paid to a special easter egg put in a Halo level by Jaime Case Griesemer for the benefit of his long-time significant other, Meg Pallor Sagi. It has come to be known as The Megg . Recently Megg-hunt discussions have nearly taken over the HBO forums, prompting the creation of two Megg FAQs, one at HBO by Louis Wu and one at Subnova by Shishka, and now a new Megg-only forum at Subnova. The Subnova Megg forum is of particular note, as that community features the only people who have firsthand knowledge of what it takes to see The Megg, including Pallor, whom it is said may deign to read it and post once in awhile.

Some may remember the questions raised when Halo was first announced for the Xbox, specifically with regards to how chatting would work in Internet play. This, of course, turned out to be a non-issue when Halo shipped without any officially supported Internet play.

However, at the time, there were those of the opinion that any shooter was best played with a mouse and a keyboard, and that having a keyboard gave the added advantage of allowing text chat.

Now that Xbox Live is out with voice chat, texting seems unnecessary. And most will admit that although different from the mouse and keyboard, the Xbox controller is more than serviceable for playing Halo.

However, that didn't stop Sega from doing what many said could not, should not, would not be done-- the production and sale of a dongle that would undo the incompatibility-creating USB dongle that Microsoft made for the Xbox to prevent you from plugging USB peripherals into what is, essentially, a USB port.

That is to say, they are selling a USB keyboard adapter for use with Phantasy Star Online, which was noted today at Penny Arcade, which also has a bit of a review of the Xbox version of PSO.

Enjoy.

Several major websites reported earlier this month Bungie's revelation that Halo 2 would not be released in time for the 2003 holidays as many had expected. The news even went as far as major mainstream sites such as Reuters and BBC News.

Matt Soell made the original posts at Bungie.net and the HBO forum, and it was soon picked up by Louis Wu in the HBO news. After the news started to reach other sites, poena.dare compiled a list on HBO's forum.

There is no release date other than 2004 at this point.

OK, since we hardly ever update around here these days, maybe this will slip by and no one will notice. Maybe not.

Anyway, this has to be about the strangest Halo reference we've ever seen. And before anybody complains, the text and images in this story we're about to link to are of a decidedly sexual, some might say odd-- nature. So be forewarned.

Game Girl Advance ran a story last October on a Japanese game called Rez for the PlayStation2, which ships with a peripheral called a trance vibrator . Lord knows how this escaped our notice til now.

And yes, that means exactly what you think it does. Pervert. And if you weren't thinking that, you're probably too young to be reading the story anyway. Whatever you do, don't ask your parents what it means and then mention we told you about it. That would be bad.

At any rate, the Halo reference comes in here (pun intended):

Now, let me confess that this is not the first time that I've used a game component to, er, stimulate myself physically. Ever since they invented the whole rumble pack/vibrating technology in controllers, it's been on my mind, and sometimes in my practice (fellow game girls, you know what I'm talking about). The thing is, though, it's often frustrating since the vibrations are not nice and steady, but sporadic. Also I found it's tough to actually play the game and use the controller in nasty ways at the same time. I did discover that Halo was a pretty good game for this (although for not much else), because as the gunner in the Warthog, you have unlimited ammo and you can just park yourself somewhere and rat-tat-tat to your heart's content. Another issue, and one not solved by the Xbox controller, is the shape of the device - less than ideal.

Unless somebody can do better than that, I vote this the strangest use for a Warthog ever. Randy Glass, move over.

Thanks to Mikey-San for pointing this out on RHL.

The latest email update from Gamasutra, a site devoted to game development, lists positions for a developer and an 3d environmental artist as open. These positions aren't yet listed on Bungie's own Jobs page, but they can be seen by searching Gamasutra's job database for Bungie; they're listed as new as of January 31. Thanks to Acrappa for the heads-up.

c0ld vengeance has given us his plan for how to handle Halo 2 when it comes out, and entitled it Halo 2: A Bachelor's Guide . We might actually try this; although, to be honest, this is only a slightly formalized version of an average weekend.

IGN is reporting that Halo has now been included in the holiday promotional package that comes with every Xbox sold between December 11 and 31 in Germany. Earlier the bundle included Jet Set Radio Future and Sega GT; now it comes with all three games.

Thanks to Acrappa for the heads-up on RHL.