XboxSolution puts up an editorial reiterating everything anyone from Bungie has ever said about release dates: that games are released when they're done.

Mat "angryzenmaster" Noguchi posted a note on his blog, warning those that anybody who says they know some inside info on Halo 2 is either wrong or about to be sued. Hmm. Does that mean some unlucky bugger has violated his NDA somewhere? One can only speculate.

Just to let everyone know, I-- like I suspect many have in the Halo community-- been receiving email that loudly proclaims that it "is not spam" from a site called GiftStakes.com, and announcing that you've won an Xbox, and all you need to do is claim it from their website.

If you follow the link, you'll be asked for a code from the email, and taken to a page to enter your name and address.. and then they'll ask you to pay for the shipping and handling of your prize. Debit card is the only payment method accepted.

[image:4040 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]Let the rampant speculation begin. The item countdown on the Gearbox projects page, which temporarily reversed itself earlier, is now gone entirely.

Does that mean there are no more items? Does it mean Golden Master? Does it mean nothing at all?

Time will tell.

Okay, this morning we've got a couple sites, in this case Xbox365, quoting EuroGamer, saying that Halo 2's release date has "slipped" to April of 2004. EuroGamer cites Microsoft as the source of the information, but there's no official press release text or link to one; in the Microsoft Game Studios Press Site, there's no mention of this "information". Eurogamer claims this is a delay of two months.

Everyone who watches this space knows that the only thing that was officially ever said about Halo 2 was "in 2004". If you want to interpret that to mean January 2004, then sure, I guess releasing in March means a two month delay. But you can't have a delay of an unofficial release date; and frankly, anybody who thinks about it for two seconds would probably assume that if Bungie knew that far in advance that it was impossible to release for the Christmas 2003 season, that the delay was probably going to be more than just a few weeks, so assuming January was probably wrong in the first place.

It's also unclear whether or not the dates in question are intended for a European audience; that seems to be the opinion of the Xbox365 forumgoers, anyway.

And of course, at the end of it all, there's horses' mouths and horses' asses; Microsoft is a big company, and it's probably better to trust those who are closer to what's going on.

UPDATE: Microsoft's official Xbox.com game list still lists the release date for Halo 2 as "TBA", although the page for Halo 2 itself does, in fact, say March 2004.

Lorraine Mehve R. McLees posted in the HBO forum the other day, just to clarify a couple of comments people were making on the Official Xbox Magazine cover art. The work is, indeed, hers-- but she was so tired after finishing it that she forgot to sign it.

Matt has returned to the HBO forum to disabuse the usual suspects of their delusion about release dates from Electronics Boutique.

As Matt Soell put it in the HBO forum and in an email to Rampancy, this is one of those times when rumors aren't entirely untrue.

To wit:

The Phoenix team has decided to shelve the game they were working on in favor of a new project. We actually look upon this as a good thing. They're still called the Phoenix team, but they're doing something different.

And what exactly is something different ?

Stay tuned...

There's a rumor running at Xbox365 that interprets some recent trends as meaning that Nintendo intends to pull a Sega and go software-only soon. Consider the source, but give it a look anyway.

bikeman74 has posted on the HBO forum that a file called halo2trailer.mov on the Imesh and Kazaa P2P file sharing systems is, in fact, a hoax contrary to earlier claims.

InsideMacGames is saying that the Official UK Xbox Magazine has reported that Halo 2 is in development and will be out for Christmas 2003. There is a quote in the IMG article, but it only mentions the Xbox General Manager -- not a name.

Ok, definitely put this one in the Crack Pipe category. But recently a story ran on MacCentral that Contraband Entertainment had announced a new secret project in development for the Macintosh platform that they dubbed Heroin 4 U .