The San Diego Union-Tribune is carrying a story quoting notable directors Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis as saying they expect that like music videos and television before, video games will have an increasing influence on Hollywood films. They key, as Jason Jones has said himself, is that playing a game is about telling a story:

Bob Wiederhold, CEO of Silicon Valley startup Transitive Corporation, has stated in an interview with Wired that his company's QuickTransit approach to emulation will allow the Xbox 2 to run games that run on today's Xbox. However, despite this, the company refuses to name any of their six clients, all of which are described as "OEM PC manufacturers" which would not be Microsoft unless you called the Xbox a PC (which is a no-no).

Part IV of the series "As Real As a 'Survivor' Elimination" focusing on realism in Halo is now up over at the Junkyard. This one covers Silent Cartographer. In this part, Captain Luthan (not his real name) gives advice on handling Hunters:

GameDaily has interviewed Bungie's Pete Parsons about (what else) Halo 2. Two concepts kept coming up; how Bungie has deepened and extended the single player story (and kept most of the story out of the press, so far) and how the multiplayer aspect is now fully realized and a separate experience both from multiplayer in Halo 1 and from the single player in Halo 2:

The third part of skeifer's series of articles on realism in Halo has gone up at The Junkyard. This one kicks off with Truth & Reconciliation; Silent Cartographer will be in the next installment.

After a long hiatus, there's another interview with Wideload Games Pressident Alex Seropian. To be honest, there's almost nothing in here that wasn't covered in earlier interviews, except perhaps Alex's canyon bomber game on the Commodore PET.

Thanks Louis Wu at HBO.

Microsoft's VP for Xbox marketing has been interviewed over at GameSpot, and, predictably, the subject of Halo 2 comes up. Here's what Pete Moore had to say:

Frank "Frankie" O'Connor and Brian "SketchFactor" Jarrard of Bungie have been interviewed by César "Cesar" A. Berardini at TeamXbox. Among the highlights: Frankie plays Halo on his Titanium Powerbook from the toilet. No kidding. I thought only I did that.

Thanks Louis Wu at HBO for the heads-up.

Ryan "Mhaddy" Matthews of the Junkyard writes in about their new Spotlight:

TeamXbox has an interview with XNA developer Scott Henson at Microsoft about what exactly XNA is going to do for the average gamer. One scenario he imagines is where users on Windows PCs play one kind of role in the same game as console players fulfilling a different role:

PC Pro has an article paraphrasing Chief Xbox officer Robbie Bach as saying he believes the Xbox 2 can beat out Sony's upcoming PlayStation 3, possibly even in the Japanese market.

FlyingV over at Battleground: Halo has interviewed enterprising Halo modmaker MonoxideC, responsible for the multiplayer Library mod, among others. One of the tidbits he lets drop is the fact that his next mod, a multiplayer version of Assault on the Control Room, is almost done, and some screenshots may be forthcoming soon, as well as a tutorial on converting single player maps to multiplayer.

Cenobite is the featured spotlight (lucky number seven for members of Starsiege:2845 in fact) over at the Junkyard. Cenobite did the Master Chief skin for Tribes 2, among other things. Thanks to Ryan "Mhaddy" Matthews for the heads-up.