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?

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."

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.

A few items of note:

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.

TeamXbox has a feature on the Xbox 360's probable launch lineup; the games that will make it, those that won't but should, the ones you might not know about, and a category called "where the hell is" games. The article begins by mentioning Halo: