Since an announcement at Xbox.com appeared and was just as quickly removed, the Halo community has been awash in discussion about the apparent appointment of Neill Blomkamp as director of the silver screen adaptation of Halo. Neither Microsoft Game Studios nor Bungie Studios have chosen to comment on the announcement, although Blomkamp himself has granted two interviews on the subject: one to Ain't It Cool News, and the other a gracious response to two questions submitted by the Red vs Blue fan community, which was keen to know whether the movie would draw from the games or the novels (and from which of each) and also if there could possibly be any easter eggs in the movie for RvB fans.

Official Secrets And Common Knowledge
The withdrawal of the official notice as well as refusal to comment by Microsoft and Bungie would seem to smack of a premature announcement, rather than an erroneous one. If the later, Blomkamp would seem to be just going along with the joke, and having us on until such time as an official announcement is made. If the former, one wonders why Microsoft simply doesn't ask Peter Jackson and Blomkamp from refraining from giving interviews until there is an official announcement.

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Yesterday I responded to Ozymandias' reasons why he couldn't endorse modchipping for adding new functionality, such as that supported by the excellent Xbox Media Center software, because it would harm Microsoft's business model, in which they subsidize the hardware and depend on you buying software and accessories. The assumption here is that every hacker who uses his Xbox for running Linux and XBMC spends less time gaming and buys fewer games. The real allegation there, of course, is that all hackers are really interested in is pirating games.

Ozymandias listed one other reason he thought someone might want to modchip an Xbox, and, not surprisingly, he doesn't condone this one, either.

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Yesterday I mentioned Ozymandias' blog entry where he lists several reasons why an Xbox owner might want to modchip his console, as well as why he, in his own personal opinion, apart from being a Microsoft employee, could not approve of such actions.

The first was fairly clean-cut: because it enables piracy. Fair enough. Ozymandias then went a bit off the deep end on the piracy issue, which I commented on yesterday.

Another reason he says an owner might want to install a modchip would be to run other kinds of non-piracy related code on the Xbox. Some people just want to run Linux on an Xbox for the heck of it. Far more people are interested in the free Xbox Media Center software, which makes the media center features of even the newer Xbox 360, coupled with Windows Media Center edition, look like a black and white television with rabbit aerials.

Ozymandias' objection to the homebrew crowd is that it breaks Microsoft's business model. Poor Microsoft!

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At first glance, this story probably will inspire a lot of "duh, so what" responses. After all, modchips are used to do lots of things to your Xbox console, nearly all of which Microsoft doesn't want you to do.

They can let you play illegally copied games. They can let you modify your Xbox in ways that permit cheating on Xbox Live (although for the most part it can't stop them from detecting you). It can also let you run unrelated software on your Xbox, such as the Linux operating system, turning it into a codec-agnostic media player or even a budget PC. Neither of those things generate additional post-sale revenue to Microsoft, and some even make the company look bad (hee, hee! Linux on an Xbox!) or could draw the ire of organizations like the RIAA towards Microsoft if they are seen as contributing to infringement by, say, supporting codecs like DivX which are alleged to be used primarily for pirating video.

So what's not surprising is Ozymandias' latest blog entry where he details the reasons why Xbox owners might mod their box and the reasons why he can't "condone" it. He completely bypasses the cheating issue and never once mentions Xbox Live, so I'll also leave that mostly out of this. He does propose three reasons why he can imagine someone might mod an Xbox:

• the ability to copy and play pirated games
• the ability to play import games
• the ability to add new functionality (such as running homebrew software)

Nobody reasonable is going to argue that easy access to pirated games is bad for Microsoft, bad for the platform, and bad for deveopers. No one is going to expect Microsoft to condone using a modchip for this purpose.

Where this goes wrong is when Ozymandias decides he needs to pile on the piracy issue and make a lot of the same bogus generalizations that have been thrown around for the better part of two and a half decades now.

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San Jose Mercury News columnist Dean Takahashi has written a second book about Microsoft's foray into the console gaming business. Released as an eBook, The Xbox 360 Uncloaked: The Real Story Behind Microsoft's Next-Generation Video Game Console also offers some interesting perspectives on the development of Bungie's Halo franchise.

That the fate of the new console should be tied to Bungie's flagship game is certainly no shock; since 2001 Bungie's series of shooters have been system-sellers for the Xbox, and Halo 2 has had a stranglehold on the top spot in Microsoft' Xbox Live online gaming service since it was released in late 2004.

Takahashi's book claims that Bungie became caught in a struggle between the hardware and software sides of the Microsoft Games Division over how to best promote both the platform as a whole and individual games, and that eventually Hamilton Chu, Pete Parsons, as well as other Bungie staffers, and Ed Fries, who spearheaded the buyout of Bungie by Microsoft, were all casualties of it in one way or another.

The below text is a sort of "executive summary" of the book, including many the points where the stories of Bungie and Halo intersect with the business of Microsoft Games Studio and the division of Microsoft that makes the Xbox and the Xbox 360. Excerpts from Takahashi's book are reproduced here with permission of the author. All quotations and paraphrases of statements by personnel currently or formerly of Microsoft or Bungie, whether identified by name or not, are taken from the book; no one contacted for this article wished to comment for the record at the time of its publication.

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Recently a poster in the HBO forum retorted that he wasn't even bothering to read the latest Bungie Weekly Update because it only contained generalizations and secrets; nothing concrete.

Whether one is itching for Bungie to say something about what it's working on or not, I felt that going to the effort to say that one wasn't going to the effort of reading the Update oneself to determine if there was new information in it or not was a bit silly.

This sparked debate about a number of related issues, into which the idea was injected that Bungie isn't saying anything because they have nothing they want to say.

I won't summarize the entire exchange in any more detail; the thread in the HBO forum is still there, so those who have not yet taken a look may do so.

I think it's assumed that Bungie has nothing they want to say right now. The question for months now has been why there isn't anything Bungie wants to talk about. Especially when Frankie is writing that things are going so well and there are so many cool things and that he wants to talk about them but he can't.

That creates the impression that not only does Microsoft want to talk about some new project that may or may not be "Halo 3" but can't (or rather does, but then recants) because Bungie hasn't announced it, but that individual employees also want to talk about this new project, while others say that there isn't anything they want to talk about.

There either is, or is not, a pink elephant in the room. I think many of us would just like it acknowledged whether or not it's really there, even if we don't get any details whatsoever on what kind of pink elephant it is or when it is going to be released in stores. If it's there, we can reassure ourselves that we're not seeing things. If it's not, we can all go back to our twelve-step programs and try to put our lives back together.