Seth Schiesel at the old grey lady wrote his impressions of the Xbox 360 after sitting down with one at Microsoft's X05 show in Amsterdam last week. While Bungie wasn't showing anything, it is impossible for the new console to escape the shadow of its star franchise, even when nothing's actually been said about it. In comparison, it seems that the shooter slated for the marquee spot in the 360's launch lineup is faring very well:
A double dose of Weekly What's Update this week. SketchFactor got himself all primed to fill in for an ailing Frankie, and then Frankie used his dying breath to provide the real update. What a trooper. For all the verbiage, most of it is rehash of the week's events-- a Halo character to appear in DOA4 and the announcement of, in Frankie's words, Peter Freaking Jackson as the Executive Producer of the Halo film.
Microsoft continues to play cagey with information about the Halo franchise in the aftermath of Gates' E3 comments and the absence of an official announcement by Bungie.
Interviewing Peter Moore and J Allard, Game Informer had the following exchange:
GI: Would you hold Halo 3 for the same time as the launch for the movie?
Moore: Halo what? What are you talking about?
A recent back-and-forth in the HBO forum, as well as numerous references to quotes involving Halo, possibly Halo 3, and release dates in the past year led me to want to try and collate a bunch of these references.
First, let's take this quote from Robbie Bach at Microsoft:
"We're going to ship it when it's ready. [...] You have to be careful with franchises like this."
That sounds like Halo 3, doesn't it? Sound just like what Bach said about Halo at X05, right?
Wrong.
That was about Halo 2, back in January of 2004. The upshot? Halo games get released "when they're ready".
Is that true?
Frankie posted a very no-nonsense denial of the purported script for Halo 3 that we mentioned yesterday, calling it "either fake, or the fanfic of a dedicated Halo fan being passed off as real."
Yesterday, Kotaku reported on a thread in the TeamXbox Forums that supposedly had a "leaked" copy of the script for Halo 3, in the form of a 119 page (barely 118 not including the cover, looks like the author was shooting for 117) PDF file entitled "Draft4". Shortly thereafter, the thread in the TXB forums was taken down. Kotaku updated their story with a link to the original source-- this thread in the RichesWillRust forum, to which many new users flocked to register and download the file. Meanwhile, several pages of comments on that thread were apparently deleted by a forum mod.
What's in the file?
Kotaku got their hands on the newest copy of Xbox 360 World, the magazine that currently has the words "Halo 3" and "PS3 Is Dead" on its cover, along with a picture of the Master Chief. As many predicted, there's no official announcement or even new information in the issue at all:
As it turns out, there’s nothing new in Xbox 360 World, just as we said there wouldn’t be. The cover (see image) refers to a six-page feature at the end of the magazine of readers suggesting what should be included in Halo 3.
Chris Bryan has recreated what looks like a few seconds from the Halo 2 announcement trailer with what one imagine might be Halo 3 quality graphics-- entirely from scratch (no extracted content). HBO has versions in QT and WMV formats. It's a small download, but quite impressive and well worth it. Thanks Louis Wu.
Frankie filed the Weekly What's Update this week from the floor of the Tokyo Game Show, after getting blitzed on martinis. Wait, that's not right.
Frankie was there just to catch up on other Microsoft games and stuff he likes-- he mentions Phantagram's Ninety Nine Nights (as a lot of people are doing this week)
In Bungie-related news, the move to Kirkland is complete and Bungie held their Summer Pentathlon-- those events will get written up (hopefully) in next week's Update.
Ryan 'Mhaddy' Matthews at the Junkyard has put up the latest of their Spotlight series of interviews; this one features Jason "Stuntmutt" Cascarina, author of One One Se7en. Plus, there's a strip to commemorate the occasion.
Also of note:
This week's Weekly What's Update points out that Bungie's "Fight the Flood" T-shirts have raised over $120,000 to help the American Red Cross' relief efforts following the devestation of Hurricane Katrina. There are also a few movie tidbits ("ages away") word on Bungie's new digs (ready, moving next week) and a visit from Claude "Louis Wu" Errera of Bungie.org, whom we've been promised is not going to find out anything about the "secret" new project.
Having recently returned to the Rampancy cave after a short stretch on the steppe, I've collected a few news nibblets of note:
Also buried in that short Variety article is this tidbit:
Future vidgame iterations of "Halo," which has already generated more than $600 million in sales for its first two versions, are almost certain. If possible, Microsoft and U will synchronize a game and movie release to take advantage of cross-marketing.
This week's What's Update at Bungie.net isn't much to shake a stick at, but that's because Frankie and the gang at Bungie are busting their you-know-whats on the next game which may or may not be Halo 3. Nobody's seen or heard from Ben yet, but the answer is forthcoming next week.
