IE Magazine (Interactive Entertainment) is running an interview with Ed Fries from Microsoft's gaming division. In addition to a couple of tidbits I didn't know, like the fact that Fries started with MS in 1985 as an intern, there's a short mention of Halo and other Xbox launch titles:
TeamXbox posted an interview with J Allard yesterday from the Xbox Unleashed event in New York. On the subject of online play, which comes to the Xbox next summer:
Microsoft may not break even on the Xbox gaming console until 2004, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker, quoted yesterday in an article at Reuters.
Gaming Age has put up an article describing their first impressions of playing Halo. It's generally complimentary, although their response to the game's opening wasn't nearly as enthusiastic as most fans' reactions to the intro movies posted awhile back:
Allenthar wrote a nice post in our forum about his experience at the Xbox Odyssey event in San Fransisco on the 4th of this month. It focuses mostly on playing impressions and combat events rather than story spoilers, but he does warn that reading it might take away from the first experience of playing the game, so beware.
What do columnists for Advertising Age know about the console gaming market?
Not much. Even Bob Garfield, writing for the AdReview site, admits he doesn't know much about gaming, so when discussing the recent Xbox campaign by McCann-Erickson, he delved into gaming message boards to find out what prospective customers were looking for.
TeamXbox has posted a link to a RealPlayer edition of the Xbox commercial featuring Halo gameplay footage that is expected to air starting November 11. There's a article about the campaign at adreview as well.
Louis Wu at HBO spotted that xbox.ign.com has posted the second part of their Halo Multiplayer Guide. Just like the first part, right now it's visible only to IGNInsiders. This part describes Halo's 26 multiplayer game variations.
Game-Revolution has posted a rundown on the Xbox's launch titles in different categories. Naturally, Halo kicks off the Action category, and they liked the game a lot:
tanmeatloaf, or Sebastian, over at Xbox365 just got back from the Xbox Unleashed event in Los Angeles and has posted an article about his experiences there. Halo doesn't get mentioned much in the article itself except to say that despite earlier indications, Halo was available in the free play areas but not used in the competetion phases of the event. Later, in a response to a reader question about Halo, he wrote:
A story at Wired News focusing on the Xbox Unleashed event is pointing out that production machines there are running 12 hours at a stretch without any crashes, and reiterates that the instability noticed in some kiosk machines were caused by faulty demo discs and not bad hardware.
Sam posted about his experiences playing Halo at a kiosk in a local mall over at HBO. Besides saying that the Xbox controller wasn't anywhere near as bad as suggested, he was impressed with Halo in most respects, especially the graphics: