The Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) has announced that their Halo 2 Xbox tournament is changing format from 5x5 to 4x4, due to "overwhelming support" for that format. Thanks Louis Wu at HBO.

In case you've been hiding under a rock for the past few days, it appears that Microsoft has scheduled the Xbox 2 introduction-- to be MC'd by Elijah "Frodo Lives" Woods and accompanied musically by The Killers-- for May 12 on Music Television. Xbox365 (and many others, including HBO) has the story.

Other items:

Today marks the start of a new series by a new staffer here at Rampancy. Sistimatic, a fan of Bungie games since the days of Marathon on the Macintosh, has looked back into the Marathon manual's retrospective on the battle at the Plain of Marathon to find war lessons applicable to Halo players today. Marathon Lessons is the first article in a series we're calling A Sistimatic Approach.

Other news:

[image:9163 align=left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]Xbox.com and Bungie.net have news on Bungie's map expansion and downloadable content (DLC) plans for Halo 2.

At the end of next month, there will be two maps available for free to Xbox Live subscribers, and an additional two maps available for $5.99.

Jeff Gross of the Video Gamers League writes that they have recently announced a $20,000 gaming tournament that will include Halo 2. VGL is entering its fifth season, and the schedule for this year includes events in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Orlando, San Francisco and Chicago. More information is available from VGL's website.

Nick at HaloDev has announced Prometheus, a map editor for Halo engine games. The editor isn't quite available yet, but information about the upcoming application is available at HaloDev; the team says they expect to provide updates on their progress at the site about twice a month.

Katana at demented puppy dot com notes that IWTPH2 has come up with an "unexpected" Halo CE map release. It's called Chop Chop, and is custom-made for close-quarters sword combat with DocOctavius' sword mod. See this thread in the Gearbox forum for screenshots and download links.

Katana writes on demented puppy dot com that he's going to be covering Halo Custom Edition for that site.

The Game Developers Conference has kicked off with J. Allard's keynote address, and the web is atwitter with news about Microsoft's next console, despite the machine itself not yet making an appearance. Here are a few links to items floating through the ethernet at the moment:

The nominees for the Game Developers Choice Awards of 2005 are out, and the audio team for Halo 2, including Marty "The Elder" O'Donnell, C Paul Johnson, and Jay "Man Behind the Man" Weinland are up for kudos.

A flurry of news in the console business today; Sony says they'll make a PS3 announcement in March, and that the console will be "playable" at E3 this year.

Jillybean joins the Halo Story Page team; not surprising since the excellent writeup she posted on Halo 2's plot in the HBO forum.

Stuntmutt notes on his blog today that his lovely lady accepted his marriage proposal this past New Year's Eve; see the community reaction in the HBO forum.

Anton P Nym pointed out on our news page yesterday that Reiginko has announced a contest; participants will be asked to contribute an essay, polem, or joke and top winners in each category will receive a complete, signed set of Marathon disks.

bitterbanana over in the Gearbox Software forum has announced the release of a mod for Halo Custom Edition and PC Halo that provides a chase camera (third person view) and adjustable field of vision (FOV). Thanks VerdaFolio.