John Olin at Xbox Evolved interviewed Wideload Games' Matt Soell about how he came to Wideload, about Hail to the Chimp, and also about Stubbs the Zombie. Stubbs, it seems, may be getting a sequel:

The admin of uber community file hosting service Mythica.org has posted a note that the Useruploads service, which allowed Halo fans to host files for free, is ceasing in February of this year due to high costs and a lack of time and interest. A shame to see such a wonderful service go, but given the huge amount of bandwidth required for such a site, it is understandable that it could not have continued forever.

Since the trailer was released, the time frame of events in the upcoming Halo Wars RTS have been hot topics for discussion. Did it happen before the Halo FPS games or after? Over a long period of time, or a short one? Where did those battle rifles in the trailer come from if Halo Wars is supposed to chronicle early Human-Covenant conflicts?

Ahead of NPD data, Microsoft is claiming that Halo 3 has sold over 8 million copies so far worldwide, and the 360 console 17.7 million, according to GameDaily.

Second Foundation, home of the Halo community podcast The Riot, is holding its 2007 community awards. Voting will be open until midnight GMT on January 13.

In the interest of full disclosure, yours truly was nominated under "Biggest Community Contributor (Individual)" but I'm up against Louis Wu so if I don't win, no hard feelings. Then again, if you want to vote for me, don't let me stand in your way.

The website for GRR, the animal news network, has officially launched. The lead article is a blog entry about a Las Vegas-based scandal touching one of the candidates in Hail to the Chimp. Looks like [i][Ed. Omitted][/i] is the new [i]censored[/i].

Be sure to check it out! It's already 2008, and coincidentally, that's the year Hail to the Chimp is being released in-- in the first quarter, no less. Not long to wait now!

Myself and some guys over at Bungie.net have been kicking around this idea of starting up a monthly community newsletter. Basically it will contain lots of content from the community itself (like fan art, fanfiction...) Bungie and gaming news etc: Not everything is finalized yet but we are hard at work in an attempt to create a good newsletter that, hopefully, people will enjoy.

Bungie's "big news" for Monday was, as many predicted, the official announcement of the first installment of downloadable content for Halo 3. In this case, three new maps: Standoff, looking quite similar to parts of Tsavo Highway or The Storm, Rat's Nest, based on Crow's Nest from the campaign, and Foundry, based on the warehouse interior from The Storm and Floodgate and designed to be a Forge-friendly map with a highly configurable interior space.

Along with the Xbox 360 dashboard update due out on December 4, you can pick up classic original Xbox games through Xbox Originals. 1200 MS points will grab you games like Fable, Psychonauts, or even Halo.

Amazon.com has a page up for the two-disc Halo 3 Original Soundtrack, due out on November 20, 2007. It will include the music created by Marty O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori for Halo 3 and be published by Sumthing Else Records.

Those of us steeped in Halo 3 and Bungie Breakaway news might be forgiven momentarily for forgetting that online communities for Bungie's Mac and PC RTS games, Myth, are still hanging in there a decade after the game was released.

Unfortunately one of them, PlayMyth, has now shut down. Server administrator Blades, apparently posting as elusivemind, says he no longer has the time or energy to keep up with it.

Just a reminder-- now that Halo 3 is out, if you've played it, you'll want to edit your spoiler settings so you aren't missing out on posts that include spoilers.

Login, go to My Account, click Roles, then choose one (and only one) item that reflects your preferred default spoiler display for the front page.

Also, if you've played Halo 3, why not submit a user review?