Of course, the other thing that inevitably occurs in the void between releases is boredom, and it leads to things like this, and this, and this, to which Matt responded thusly.

Simply try to realize the truth: there is no yellow banshee.

The original organizers of the Halo Winter Season tournament currently run at iGames locations have resigned over philosophical differences with iGames. Jester and Psyrixx have both resigned; Jester posted about it in the HBO forum, and put his letter of resignation up at The Psyjnir Complex. It reads, in part:

For I have been a part of the Bungie community for five years, and that loyalty has made me extremely hard-headed and diffucult to deal with professionally. My zeal to give Halo players the best, cheapest tournament possible has interfered with my ability to effectively compromise and negotiate with iGames. [...]

Ultimately, I was trying to run a national level business-run tournament on a fan tournament budget. This was both idealistic ... and totally unrealistic. Thus my crusade comes to an end.

He also took a few moments to speculate on what the role of tournaments like the one at iGames will be in the future of Halo competition:

I simply don't think the future of national Halo competition lies in game center LANs. This summer PC/Mac Halo will allow online play. Next winter Halo 2 will support XBL. The online support of Halo will suddenly allow tournament directors like myself to run large-scale tournaments without the hassle of registration fees, finding a venue, securing the necessary equipment, and getting teams to actually show up to a physical venue. There have even been discussions regarding the possibility of the first Halo World Cup based on the popular Myth World Cup series.

He went on to say that he harbors no ill will to iGames, and that his team will continue to compete in the Halo Winter Season.

Thanks to Louis Wu at HBO for the original story.

The Halo Winter Season's second round of qualifiers is set to begin obn December 14. The first round was on November 2nd, and the third and final qualifier will be held on January 11. Each qualifier consists of a series of four man games of a single game type. The top two teams at each Qualifier will advance to one of eight regional tournaments to begin on February 2nd. Apparently there are going to be some nice prizes for the winners.

A reader over at HBO named gd found some funny and strange sound clips while playing Halo. Get all the info in the HBO forum.

A track from Halo that didn't make it onto the CD (a fact discovered by Bungie fan Micah Allen) has been added to the Outtakes page at Bungie.net. Kudos to Louis Wu at HBO.

Matt has returned to the HBO forum to disabuse the usual suspects of their delusion about release dates from Electronics Boutique.

Okay, okay... despite flat statements to the contrary from the developer (something along the lines of it is not Marathon 4 , if I recall) and the serious mismatches in timelines and terminology, Game Girl Advance has advanced the theory that Halo really is the sequel to Marathon Infinity, citing the use of the Marathon logo and the basic similarities between the two games. You be the judge.

Thanks to Louis Wu, who also differs with GGA on this point.

Pardon us if we hadn't noticed this before, but in a recent Xbox365 article, a forumgoer noted this site, Gamertag Database, which at the time of this writing lists 8,701 Xbox Live gamertags worldwide. The site isn't connected to Microsoft in any way; users can volunteer to register their own gamertags in the database, along with their location and email address, and users are encouraged to rate other gamers who use the service (think of it as a Heavenly Hosts list for XBL). There's a FAQ on the site if you have any questions. Looks interesting.

In ways reminiscent of old-school Bungie fashion, the hunt is on.

Go.

Update: And it's done, by the crew on Subnova Hotline. Just type in .fortune as a Halo profile name, and you'll trigger the egg - a throwback to Bungie.net Myth play. Read through the whole messy process in the chat log here.

Noctavis has posted his early impressions of the Xbox Live service, having spent some time playing three games that utilize it: MechAssault, Unreal Championship, and Ghost Recon. Check it out.

Matt Soell at Bungie has put up a short summary of how the Halo Winter Season Tournament is progressing. So far 1,100 gamers have showed up at over 75 iGames centers. The next round begins on December 14. Thanks again to Louis Wu.

David Evil Otto Candland (formerly CandyMan) has put up a primer on various methods for making online nicknames over at the Seventh Column site. Thanks to Louis Wu at HBO for the warning.

Today marks the one year anniversary of the Xbox and Halo, as well as the launch date of Xbox Live. Watch later this weekend for a retrospective on the last year of Halo and a look at what we know so far about Halo 2.

I recently participated in the intitial qualifying match for the Halo Winter Season tournament. My team did fairly good, had fun, and dropped out, though we'll be trying again at the next qualifier. I've blogged my report of it, playing Team Slayer, 4 vs. 4 on Hang 'Em High.

It was a tricky scenario. They held the high ground, and had superior marksmenship anyway, so we always came out on the bottom when we tried to knock them off from a distance. When we tried to get close, theyТd have plenty of time to saw us down while we approached. And if we did nothing, they killed us as soon as we spawned.

A classic siege situation, and we were stuck, watching them pull away in score. It wasnТt a matter of superior skill as much as superior strategy, and we lacked the key to take it away from them.

But we figured it out.

Read the full report to get all the goodies.

Despite losing in the second match to Thugs n Rebels, Team Overkill still posted a description of their participation in the Halo Winter Season qualifier at Kings Games in Brooklyn, New York. Louis Wu had the story at HBO.