Rapture has relaunched a temporary version of the old COERCE.net website to announce that the redoubtable Halo PC server will be back for a few months' stint.

Over in MBO's Asulym forum, there's details from Psyched, including rules and brackets, for Myth Tournament 2005 (which is actually being played with Myth II). Thanks Gholsbane for the heads-up.

Bungie is asking the community to pitch in and help the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, Bungie-style; the Bungie Store has a new $19.99 t-shirt for sale, and of that price $15 will go to the American Red Cross for hurricane relief efforts.

Yahoo is reporting that Microsoft has stated at its Tokyo, Japan Xbox Summit today that the Xbox 360 will launch in the US, Europe and Japan in time for the 2005 holiday season. The Reuters report says that previously a six week delay was expected for those territories, and other news outlets, including SPOnG, are still saying this delay will occur.

Frankie's latest Weekly What's Update mentions that the count of banned cheaters is above five thousand now and rising; in addition, he clears up a few things people still can't seem to get straight about how the AutoUpdate works.

Kiziko has news that Microsoft is denying rumors about the Xbox 360's Japanese launch being delayed, perhaps to match the expected PlayStation 3 release date. The new console is still slated for a holiday 2005 launch simultaneously in North America, Europe and Japan.

Frankie has posted on Bungie.net that on July 20, 2005, Bungie will release Autoupdate 4 for Halo 2, which will detect players using modified Halo 2 content and ban them from Xbox Live Halo 2 matchmaking, permanently, with no possibility of appeal.

This includes the use of hardware mods (modchips), so-called soft mods, and game saves or game types saved using Action Replay or similar devices.

Bungie's original Halo title, first shown to the public running on a Mac at MacWorld in New York in 1999, subsequently re-targeted for the Xbox and released in 2001, then ported to the PC by Gearbox and then re-ported to the Macintosh again by Westlake Interactive and published by MacSoft Games, has now come full circle: the Macintosh Demo of Halo is now available. You can download it from these locations:

Frankie is back at Bungie now with a brand-new Weekly What's Update. This one covers the teleporter glitch on Relic (it's "being taken care of"), demos for Halo and Halo 2, and what Sketch would look like if he ate all the pies.

News is trickling out of E3 like treacle after an explosion in a molasses factory. So far:

Voodoo Extreme is reporting from the Microsoft press conference at E3 that the Xbox 360 console will be able to play the some Xbox titles via emulation. On his blog, Major Nelson also repeats the claim issued by Robbie Bach at E3: that the Xbox 360 will play "the most popular" Xbox titles.

According to Forbes, Final Fantasy XI is indeed coming to the Xbox. The article does not go into any detail on the specifics, so it is unclear whether the original Xbox or Xbox 360 is the intended platform. The Final Fantasy series of RPGs has been a stalwart for Japanese console makers, Sony in specific over the past iterations of the PlayStation.

Quake 4 has been officially announced for the Xbox 360 at E3, confirming its inclusion on the list of games for the new console released by Microsoft following the MTV launch event for the console.

Frankie's What's What Update for May 13, 2005 mentions that the next map release date is now July 5 instead of June 28.