Matt dropped into the HBO forum to say that some Bungie Store preorders of the Halo Soundtrack had shipped as early as last Friday. So get your orders in!

We've just added the recently captured QT5 version (4 Mb, 480x360) of the television commercial for Halo that's been airing in the Canadian market this spring and was captured by Bill and Bob Maguire. Thanks to Louis Wu at HBO for the notice.

The latest poll up at Shacknews asks which platform had the most impressive games at E3 this year.

Currently the Xbox is in third place with 419 votes (15%), edged out by the Nintendo GameCube with 533 votes (19%) and getting demolished by the PC (1504 votes, 56%). Despite the console content, it looks like Shacknews really is a PC gaming site.

Trailing the Xbox were the PS2 (167 votes, 6%) and the GameBoyAdvance (56 votes, 2%).

In a forum thread at HBO discussing recent claims that Halo saved game files had been hacked to gain access to infinite ammo and other things, Mat MSN Noguchi had the following to say:

There have been a couple of interesting recent developments concerning the attempts to hack the Xbox for a variety of purposes: to modify game files, install custom programs and operating systems (Linux), play foreign games and DVDs, and, yes, even-- to make illegal copies of games and movies.

CNET has a story about Lik-Sang's mod chip for the Xbox.

GameSpot has a story up about a survey conducted by Greensfield Online. Apparently it contained some questions for consumers about concepts for new Microsoft products. One such product was an Xbox connection kit, which would let Xbox owners connect their systems to a PC for the purpose of accessing MP3s and other files. Apparently the connection would be made via ethernet

Randall Glass made a new version of his infamous Warthog Jump movie, called Warthog Jump Revisited. We're mirroring the large (240x320, 30fps, 17Mb) version right here at Rampancy.

Halo was so long-hyped, so widely acclaimed, and so eagerly anticipated that it was rare to see it, as well as its rectangular abode, the Xbox, as roundly made fun of as both were in the frames of Penny Arcade.

Their criticism of the Xbox has waned some in the intervening months, although their Awards cartoon still poked fun at Halo, featuring the Xbox's flagship title next to a picture of.. of... well, a toilet.

Various news sites around the web have, of course, been covering E3 this week, foremost among them CNET's News.com. Here are a few items pertaining to the Xbox and/or Bungie:

Everybody loves the Xbox-- but develops for the PS2 (CNET.com):

A short article at computerandvideogames.com is confirming what's been said by Bungie all along, that there will be no separate Halo Online title, but the version of Halo that will first use MS' Xbox Live gaming service will be a full sequel.

In other words, Halo 2 looks officially announced at this point, even if there are no other details available.

There's a reason why the practice of explaining how a football team could have won a game they lost-- after the fact-- is armchair or Monday morning quarterbacking.

That should be kept in mind when reading the Monday Morning CEO column at Red Mercury.

However, that doesn't mean there aren't a few salient points sneaking about.

Xbox.ign.com has a rather detailed article about what MS intends to do with Xbox Live.

All Xbox Live games will use voice communication, using a Voice Communicator module that plugs into the top slot on the controller. Your Xbox Live ID will be transportable to different Xboxes via the memory card. The system will track stats, and match players who have equal skills a good connection to you.

Sometime in the future, we may all have our hands on the game that Bungie originally intended to make when they began work on Halo.

And no, we're not talking about the Mac/PC version (which, by the way, will still happen, as far as everyone knows).

No, we're talking about a version of Halo featuring online multiplayer for MS' Xbox Live gaming service that is slated to begin beta testing later this year.

David Candyman Candland of Bungie.net is reporting that Official Xbox Magazine subscribers received the Halo demo with their edition this month. It includes a Normal difficulty version of Silent Cartographer... apparently with a different ending...