Well there seem to be a lot of emails coming in about this one: There's a Halo petition right here where they want to show how many people would prefer to see Halo on the PC and Mac since Bungie isn't sure on doing any port besides the X-Box version yet. Hey you never know if it might help. As I write this there are 2748 signatures.

The guys at InsideMacGames have a singular new Halo screenshot. The depression of probably not seeing Halo for quite a while has sunk in. Suck.

The Oregon Public Proadcasting site has an article that was written last year by Robert X. Cringely and talks about the fact that Microsoft acquisitions makes hardly anyone happy. It mainly discusses Hotmail but of course this can be brought back to Bungie. Thanks Halo.bungie.org, by ways of R-2-RO.

It looks like the big Microsoft & Bungie announcement storm is getting wrapped up. I'm pretty bummed about the whole thing myself, but I can understand the business opportunity and reasoning behind the move. I dont have to agree with it or anything though. :) Here is a bunch more stuff for you guys: (Last full item for the whole MS/Bungie thing around here, honest!)

- DailyRadar interview with Jason Jones
- MacCentral talks with some execs from TakeTwo about it.
- An edited chat log from the Bungie chat of last night.
- Gamers.com gets some community reaction from webmasters and a former employee.
- IGN talks with Ed Fries of Microsoft and Alex Seopian of Bungie about the situation.

There's a new Halo shot on Blues News. It's like 500kb, but pretty damn good looking like all those previous shots (seen here).

Of course everyone is just on this Bungie acquisation story today. Stomped has an interview with Harry Miller from Gathering of Developers, talking to him about the Oni and Myth franchise Take Two now owns and if G.O.D will be using their current partners to make games based on these franchises or if they're on the lookout for new developers. Bungie themselves put up a FAQ related to the acquisition, as well as a letter to their fans.

Gamespot has a four page interview with Bungie CEO Alexander Seropian about the acquisition of Bungie by Microsoft (see story below).

As we've been mentioning last week, Microsoft is in fact buying Bungie. The official announcement is out now and there are all kinds of interviews that you guys can read. Basically the two Chicago teams (one working on Halo)  are moving up to Washington ASAP, and the Oni team is going to finish Oni then head up there as well. Bungie is claiming that MS is giving them a bunch of freedom (Of course, would you expect to admit it even if they didnt have creative freedom?) so we'll just have to see. Here you go:

- CNet coverage of the buyout
- DailyRadar interview with Jason Jones (Thanks Rampancy.net)
- DailyRadar on the business side of things.
- BluesNews interview with Doug Zartman
- Things you should know about the buying of Bungie
- Gamespy interview with Microsoft's Ed Fries and Bungie's Alexander Seropian

Also of note is Doug Zartman makes a confirmation that Halo will be including a 1st person perspective (story), but the game will used mixed perspectives as a whole. Will Halo ever come out as a PC title now? Maybe, but not for a long ass time. Doh.

All the "professional" gaming news sites are catching up with the Microsoft buying Bungie story (as seen in our story from Thursday, and the followup yesterday). Gamespy, Daily Radar and Xbox.IGN all have their own stories on the rumors to which there still hasn't been an official response.

"Word is that certain Bungie personnel are moving to Redmond in the next couple of months. From across the country."

It's now also rumored Take Two, who owns 20% of Bungie, will be buying the rights to the Myth and Oni games leaving Bungie with Halo.

The plot thickens on the Microsoft & Bungie deal. The word I've been told by 'a little birdie' is that if in fact something like this does go down, Microsoft is considering delaying the PC release of Halo making it an X-Box debut title. I'm also told that this deal is not yet set in stone, but if things do go through we will probably see something from Microsoft in a couple of weeks.

FYI, there are MS and Bungie employees who read this page every day, considering how easy it would be to refute this information it's strange that nobody has yet. I'll keep you guys posted on anything else I can find out but leave it to Microsoft to delay our beloved Halo eh?

For those of you who have trouble reading past that date bar separating yesterday and today, here is a reminder to check out the new Halo game footage that is some of the best that has come out yet.

Oooooh, new Halo trailer. DailyRadar has scored a high and low bandwidth version of a preview of the Halo trailer that was being shown at E3. It is by far the coolest trailer they have put out, worth looking at. You can check out the Halo screenshots and drool as always while you wait.

- High-Res video: DR or or 3DAG or Shack (28megs)
- Low-Res video: DR or or 3DAG or Shack (15megs)

The website for PC Gamer UK has a partial reprint of the Halo preview/interview they have in the current print issue. It features more quotes from programmer Jason Jones, who talks about the AI and a couple of other things (it really is pretty short, and we've already seen the Halo perspective quote).

A post to the Halo.bungie.org forums has the entire quote from PC Gamer where Bungie programmer Jason Jones gives some info on the perspective in the game (see yesterday's story)

"One fundamental change from the game's initial announcement concerns its viewpoint. While originally it was promised to be a third-person game, now a more hybrid approach has been chosen. The exact ration of the two modes hasn't been finalised - clearly, without using Delta Force's window approach, it's impossible to use a sniper rifle in third-person, while driving the bouncing jeeps without the peripheral vision allowed by third-person makes things less enjoyable - but Jason believes that the balance is moving increasinly towards the first-person model"

If Halo gets you so hot and bothered you don't mind looking at scans, head over to Halo Players, where they have new scans from the latest PC Gamer UK. These are from the E3 trailer.

Isnt this something? The latest issue of PCGamerUK is carrying a preview of Halo according to Haloplayer.com which is nothing incredibly special on its own, there are 4 new screenshots in there though. What is so special? This quote from Jason Jones of Bungie:

"Jason believes that the balance is moving increasingly towards the first person model"

Looking at all the screenshots of Halo of course everyone has known that Bungie has been pretty vocal about refusing to use the FPS style. I guess everyone changes their mind though eh?. Thanks Johnny Rotten! 5:15pm update: Here is the entire quote

Bungie.net has a new poll asking what people would pay to get the E3 Halo DVD video with surround sound. Whatever comes from the poll though, the movie will be released for free online too.

IGNPC has quite the glowing preview of Halo from Bungie. There is one more screenshot in there that they claim is new as well. The gist of the article is "Halo has really high expectations"

Well, I guess GameCenter is a better page than this one, because they dug up some new Halo screenshots from Bungie. As always it looks cool. (update: Doh, posted these right before E3 but I'll leave it here cuz they are neeto)

core has a 35mb Quicktime movie that was grabbed from a German magazine cover CD showing Bungie's fantastic looking Halo. They will soon also have a translated version of the preview in the magazine.