There's a story at FunXbox that states Microsoft is now saying that 1.1M Xbox consoles have been shipped to retailers (note: this does NOT mean sold ).

One of the things cited as refreshing, if not actually innovative, about Halo is the fact that it doesn't depend on the usual key-door-boss sequence that has plagued the shooter genre since Doom. It seems not everyone feels the same:

It's been lost in all the hype over this holiday season's console wars, but the reigning king of the living room is still Sony and the PlayStation-- both versions, in fact.

IGN has a story that puts sales of the PS2 and PS1 combined pretty close to the numbers being claimed for the Xbox and the GameCube-- not bad considering the PS2 was last year's big winner, and the PS1 is long in the tooth indeed:

Someone named bunnie has apparently already taken Xbox hacking a step further than anyone else so far. He removed the box's surface-mounted BIOS chip and installed a socket so that he could replace it with a standard PC BIOS chip.

Then, he downloaded the contents of the Xbox's BIOS chip and posted them on his web site, along with pictures and instructions on how he did it.

Voodoo Extreme's poll asking for your pick for console game of the year has ended and Halo absolutely swept the competition with 47% (1928) of the votes.

There is now a new poll asking which game has the best graphics of 2001. Halo is winning with 23% (1098) of the votes, but Return To Castle Wolfenstein is only 88 votes behind. Go vote, and vote often!

About that Halo PDF guide for IGN Insiders we reported yesterday. Claude Errera let us know that it is indeed the Halo walkthrough at IGN Guides, minus the screenshots.

Master_Chief (where do you suppose he got that name from?) of Xbox Xtreme has written a short but sweet Halo review. It describes Halo as [non-stop] action based around combat, combat and more combat and mind blowing . Overall, Halo scored 9.5 out of 10. (Thanks HBO)

Xbox City has reviewed Halo and found it to be a great game. So great, in fact, that it received the X Factor award; an unexplained title apparently given to the Xbox's best games. Halo scored 4.8 out of 5. (Thanks HBO)

Xbox Gamers's own Akuma has written a Halo review. The game was praised for its immaculate sound and gameplay as well as in all other reviewed criteria. Xbox Gamers scored Halo 9.9 out of 10. (Thanks HBO)

Krillian Hex of Xbox Gaming got a hold of Halo and gave it an extremely positive review:

Interestingly enough, PC Magazine has reviewed the Xbox version of Halo, though it is an extremely short article:

Byron Hinson at ActiveXbox has posted a Halo review, and he gives the game a 95% rating:

Tom's Hardware has a nice feature on the console wars, talking about the battles between videogame systems all the way from Atari's Video Computer System up to the Xbox and the GameCube. Thanks to Noctavis who pointed it out on RHL.

The Armchair Empire has given Halo a rating of 9 out of 10, lauding it especially for the graphics, while griping a bit about a few framerate issues:

Nintendo has put out a press release to combat yesterday's offering from Microsoft, and there are some interesting developments here: