Despite the chance of getting into the Halo 3 beta if you dusted off your copy of Halo 2 for three hours on Xbox Live this past week, the top game on the service continues to be Gears of War, which somehow manages to get more unique users every week out of the ten million xbox 360s worldwide, despite the fact that there are more than twice as many original Xboxes out there, plus the fact that 360s with hard drives can also play Halo 2.

Xbox 360 Fanboy has put up a scan of the invite card you get when you purchase one of the specially-marked boxes of Crackdown that give you access to the upcoming Halo 3 public multiplayer data. It contains the answers to many of the questions that those hoping to get into the beta have been asking themselves:

Members of the PMS and Cavegirls clans came out to challenge the Bungie guys (and friends) in the latest humpday and came away winners, 6 to 5. The Bungie guys complain they were undermanned, but surely they knew that going in? Details at Bungie.net in KfeckingP's post.

It's not quite what you think. Wired News interviews Epic's Mark Rein about the Unreal Engine 3 technology. While usually it's CliffyB letting his mouth run away with him a little bit, here it's Rein, who is positively bubbling over the fact that Gears of War cost only ten million dollars to make.

So, while Sony is pushing Killzone 2 as their Halo-killer, Rein wants to bring Halo to the PlayStation. Except it's called Unreal Tournament.

Over at IGN, Erik Brudvik pines for truly "mind-blowing" content from Halo 3 and opines that no news is not good news:

The hype for Halo 3 is already at absurd levels. The ball is in Microsoft and Bungie's court and it's their marketing battle to lose now. A misstep with the beta could be more damaging than many might initially believe. Then again, beta success could send the interest in Halo 3 through the roof. Let's all hope for the best.

Kotaku is reporting that a playable demo of the second installment in Sony's Halo-killer-wannabe Killzone franchise will be available before Bungie hits Xbox Live with its extensive Halo 3 Multiplayer Public Beta. Kotaku heard it from über Halo fan Luke Smith at 1UP, and I heard it from P_40E in #hbo.

With the three days to get in your three hours of Halo 2 on Xbox Live play on an Xbox 360 in already passed, and web registration-- apparently-- about to open, Halo 2 players are poised over their keyboards to attempt to become one of the 13,333 lucky entrants into Phase Two of the selection process for Bungie's Halo 3 multiplayer beta.

What's the most accurate thing you can think of? Probably this laser. The answer is a weapon so versatile it can snipe infantry or fry vehicles. It even makes coffee at a thousand yards. It is the Spartan Laser, the heavily-censored subject of KP's latest treatise on the weapons and vehicles in Halo 3.

Let's face it: if the Halo 3 Public Beta is our new Great Journey, then the Prophet of Truth is a liar, because some of us are going to be left behind. Not everybody who wants to can get in. If everybody could get in, there'd be no difference between the beta test and actually releasing the game. At least as far as multiplayer is concerned.

Games In Action gets to the bottom of the conspiracy that put KP in position to get Frankie's coffee keep the Halo fan community abreast of Halo 3's development. It's a sordid tale of job applications and interviews that exposes the seamy underbelly of game development.

Of course, working at Bungie isn't all sushi farts and roses, but there are advantages, says KP:

KP's latest in weapons profiling focuses on the Covenant's Type-2 Antipersonnel Fragmentation Grenade, or Spike Grenade. Even with all the info up close and personnel, we still have to settle for a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot for an image. Hey, how about some pictures, like we got for the Mongi?