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.

SketchFactor has posted the summary of the latest Humpday Challenge-- after a short hiatus following their humiliation against typical Japanese Halo players, Bungie rewrote the rules (they now pick one of the gametypes and actually practice as a team beforehand) and rebounded with a solid victory over Art Vand3lay, flechette, goatrope, Ducain, Sorahn, and Jphan7om of

Halo 3 garners a mention in today's Penny Arcade cartoon, as a pawn in the ongoing chess match between Microsoft and Sony over the next-generation console launches.

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:

SPOnG has a story speculating that the on-again, off-again adventure game Kameo will be released finally on the Xbox 2 rather than the Xbox. More surprisingly, it claims that it was ported to the new console by Rare only six weeks after they received their first Xenon development kits, and that they could have done it even faster.

(Could this give credence to rumors of Halo 2.5 for Xbox 2 as a launch title? Only the Shadow knows --Ed.)

Eurogamer has a story quoting Shane Kim at Microsoft Game Studios that the Xbox's most popular franchises, including Halo, Fable amd Project Gotham Racing, will be making their way onto the next console:

"Without giving away all the surprises we have in store, gamers that love franchises like Halo, Fable, and Project Gotham Racing can safely assume we will continue to invest in them as we move into the next generation."

Spong, featuring a new Googlified logo, put up a story late last night (so it's not an April Fool's joke, at least not a fair one) that says the Xbox 2 will have downloadable demo content right at launch.

In other news:

SPOnG has a story that claims retail channels are being told that current Xbox hardware is being phased out; Major Nelson denies this in his blog, saying that shortages of Xbox hardware in the retail channel are due to the popularity of the console.

Eurogamer has a story that indicates it may be possible to "customize" your Xbox 2-- or at least for Microsoft to custom-tailor the console different geographical regions:

"We have ways, we have ideas. Look at cell phones," Microsoft VP J Allard told trade publication MCV. "You can have snap-on faceplates, you can change the skin and the batteries, and you can change the ringtones. I think we need to have a global foundation, and then personalise within region."

Joystiq links to a story at gamenews.botros.net saying that the latest OXM demo disc contained an update with five new game types for Halo 2. They are:

• Peacemakers
• Covie Gulch
• Classic CTF Tank
• Swords w/o Radar
• Golden Showers

The pistol-whipping delivered to Bungie in last week's Humpday Challenge came from the land of the rising sun, in the form of the GunShin clan. The match was arranged by Microsoft's Japanese office, who was apparently asked to find a "group of typical Japanese players". Bungie lost all three games.