Canadian 'Xbox News' Dashboard App Fuels Alternate Reality Game for Halo: Reach

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Over the last few days, Canadian Xbox 360 owners have been "treated" to a laughably bad series of nightly newscasts, dubbed "Xbox News," available for streaming on the console's dashboard.

Although initial speculation was the application was a legitimate addition to feed real-world news to Xbox 360 owners, a source tells Shacknews the videos are part of an obvious Alternate Reality Game for Halo: Reach.

When the first episode of "Xbox News" appeared online the reaction to the series was harsh, leaving Canadian gamers both frostbitten and scratching their heads.

Although the video series was meant to run without any hints at a Halo connection for a few days, Shacknews was told that initial negative reaction (and the belief that the video series was legitimate) forced the marketing team responsible to immediately skip to a video that featured a news tickerbar with references to the UNSC and an impending invasion.

Using the information provided on the UNSC Intel Twitter account set up to connect to the Xbox News videos as well as "intel" from Xbox.ca/Reach, it appears the video's sole purpose is to point Toronto and Vancouver residents to a number of preview events near the launch of Bungie's swan song.

I Love Bees this ain't, folks, but at least you know it's not "real." Unless Microsoft decides to torture Canadians with this beyond Halo: Reach's September 14 release.

Xav de Matos was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

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