Kudos to CyberBob, who kindly sent in this news tidbit which I will now slavishly copy and paste to the news (such a hard job I have):

From halo.gamesweb.de I got that the german publisher of Halo sets its release to September 2000 for the German version.

Laut Take2, dem deutschen Vertrieb von HALO, ist September 2000 der offizielle Release-Termin fьr Deutschland. Etwas Geduld ist also noch angesagt, bis ihr den Covenant auf der Ringwelt HALO die Hцlle heiss machen kцnnt.

We all know, of course, that Bungie never gives release dates for their games, but Take 2 probably has a better idea of things than we do. Interesting information, but take it with a grain of salt.