Microsoft celebrity blogger Robert Scoble confirms that the recently published photos of a near-production Xbox 360 (plus a few extra wires, apparently for "power supply testing") are, in fact, real, and that he arranged for the employee's son to play with the console, and knew that he would podcast about it.

• Xbox365, GameSpot, 360hacker, and every other site in the universe fawns over photos of what looks like a real-life sighting of an Xbox 360, which of course exists because "my dad who works for Microsoft brought it home." (Saying that on the Internet should be illegal by now--Ed.)

• Samsung has started production on the 512Mb DDR3 graphics memory chips that Microsoft will use in the Xbox 360.

In the absence of real information, outrageous rumors about Halo 3-- a game that hasn't even really been announced officially by Bungie-- are circulating far and wide. Since Bungie probably isn't going to shoot them down just now, I thought I'd take aim and do some Halo 3 Rumor Control in the latest Narc's Retort.

For various reasons it's been hard for me to keep up with news posting lately; many thanks to trav himself (formerly Sistimatic) for picking up the slack. Here are some recent items of note:

Kotaku is spreading the rumor that Fox and Universal are going to split the costs for the Halo movie script (about $5 million) and try to have the film out in 2007. (Here's hoping it doesn't suck--Ed.)

According to rumor, Microsoft developed and Alex Garland wrote a Halo movie script that was shopped to Hollywood studios yesterday by couriers in Master Chief suits. (Perhaps the Nightmare Armor guys got some work? --Ed.) Apparently, though, the reaction was not that positive.

Gamestop says Halo 3 is due out June 1, 2006. This is pure speculation on their part, as the game hasn't even been announced beyond Bill Gates remark at E3, which seems more inaccurate for each day Bungie is silent on their new project. Thanks Kotaku.

• The Xbox 360 is currently beating the PlayStation 3 in Voodoo Extreme's poll.
• Joe "Dyslexia" Renaud wrote a review of the Xbox 360's MTV unveiling two weeks ago, but we missed it.

A few Xbox 360-related notes for today:

According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Microsoft senior vice president and chief Xbox officer Robbie Bach all but says that Bill Gates misspoke himself at E3 when he referred to Halo 3 being used to blunt Sony's launch of the PlayStation 3.

Last week's What's What Update by Frankie at Bungie.net was inaccessible to us for awhile over the weekend, as was all of Bungie.net; however, we can load it now to point out the response to Bill Gates' announcement at E3 that the Sony PlayStation 3 launch would "run right into Halo 3", despite remarks in the previous WWU that Bungie's next project would not be announced for some time.

The question and answer in full from the update:

GamesIndustry.biz is reporting that Microsoft says Xbox games will need to be recompiled to work with Xbox 360. This would seem to indicate-- although it is not yet clear-- that even your old games will have to be repurchased in order to run-- unless the console can recompile it by itself, which seems extremely unlikely. Not good news for those banking on this feature.