Halo, as first released on the Xbox gaming console.

More on the announcement delay

Joystiq spoke to Phil Spencer, general manager of Microsoft Game Studios - Spencer answered a question about the lack of a Bungie announcement at E3 with a description of what WAS focused on (first-party games aimed for a holiday release this year). That suggests that Bungie's announcement was postponed because 1) they're no longer a first-party studio, and/or 2) their material is not ready for release this year. (Thanks, JustyB.) And MTV's Stephen Totilo spoke to Don Mattrick, Senior Vice President of the Interactive Entertainment Business - Mattrick confirmed that Bungie is, indeed, working on a Halo title (one that has NOT been announced before - this is major news by itself) and implied that the lack of a Bungie announcement this week was due to the fact that there was already enough Xbox news coming out of Microsoft. (Thanks, Avateur.) As Narcogen put so wryly over at Rampancy.net - welcome back to independence, Bungie. (That blog post is absolutely worth a read-through for any Bungie fan.) Update: Looks like kapowaz beat Avateur to the punch with the Mattrick article; I missed the timestamp on his post.(Louis Wu 13:38:47 +0000)

Operation Infinite Sadness

It's a sad, sad day for Bungie fans - swing by Bungie.net for full details. The short version: the announcement many have been waiting for eagerly - a new game, new Halo content, whatever it was going to be - is not going to happen tomorrow. Plans have been changed - no new date is announced. Update: we're getting a lot of mail from people who are speculating that this is a stunt (to build excitement for an announcement tomorrow), or that Bungie.net got hacked - I can confirm, after speaking to more than one Bungie spokesperson, that this is no stunt, no joke. This is real, and they're as unhappy about it as we are.(Louis Wu 02:03:06 +0000)

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