As promised, Microsoft today opened "the new virtual home for all things Halo" on Xbox 360 in the form of a free downloadable application dubbed "Halo Waypoint."

Waypoint allows players to track their progress through various Halo titles, as well as keep up with the latest news and videos. The program also rewards users with unlockable Avatar goods, like a helmet, for earning certain... Read more

It sounds like Peter Jackson's Halo game has joined his attempt at a Halo-branded feature film in the "no longer happening" graveyard.

When asked about the effort, announced in September 2006, the Hollywood director responsible for Lord of the Rings and Dead Alive told Joystiq that the "Halo project is no longer happening, it sort of collapsed when the movie didn't end up happening."

The episodic Xbox 360 game, rumored to be titled Halo Chronicles, was to be co-developed by Jackson's Wingnut Interactive and Microsoft. Jackson's attempt at a Halo movie collapsed in 2006 just after the game project was announced, though he believed the 2007 release of Halo 3 would reignite interest in the beleaguered film. However, his Halo game was still alive in April 2008, as Microsoft was then hiring staff for it.

Looking to satisfy the video sharing needs of the Halo 3 playerbase, Bungie is planning to soon roll out the public beta of its video-to-render service, which will allow players of the title to convert captured Halo 3 clips into computer-playable files.

Players that put game clips on their Bungie.net file share will be able to spend "Bungie Points" to convert the clips into standard video files. The service will provide two options: 640x360 WMV at "about 1Mbps," and 1280x720 WMV at 6Mbps.

Bungie Pro subscribers will automatically earn free Bungie Points, and point packs will also be sold. The public beta, scheduled to run until July 7, is currently open to all Bungie Pro members that registered prior to yesterday morning.

Two examples of video render quality can be found on the official Bungie site.

A limited edition Xbox 360 "Game of the Year" hardware bundle will hit North American store shelves in May, Microsoft announced today.

Priced at $399, the bundle packs an Xbox 360 Elite--itself normally sold at $399--along with copies of Bungie's shooter Halo 3 and Lionhead's action-RPG Fable II.

The Elite differs from other versions of the hardware as it comes with a 120GB hard drive, instead of a 60GB HDD (Xbox 360 Pro) or 512MB of storage (Xbox 360 Arcade).

The promotion continues Microsoft's recent trend of pairing the Xbox 360 Elite with software at no extra cost, last seen with the Resident Evil 5 bundle in March.

As it's been about two and a half weeks since we learned that the Halo 3 Mythic Map Pack was due today, it's probably a good time to remind you that the DLC is now out.

The 800 Microsoft Point ($10) add-on brings three new multiplayer maps into Bungie's Xbox 360-only shooter. Orbital and Assembly are more traditional offerings, while Sandbox is a large open arena just ripe for customization via the Forge map editor.

Details from Microsoft today round out the picture of the upcoming Halo 3 Mythic Map Pack and Gears of War 2 Snowblind Map Pack downloadable content.

The Snowblind Pack, due March 31, will cost 800 Microsoft Points--$10 of your Earth moneys. Snowblind brings four new winter-themed maps to Gears of War 2, including a frosted remake of popular Gears of War map Fuel Depot.

Halo 3's Mythic Map Pack has been scheduled for a April 9 release. The Mythic Map Pack, also costing 800 Microsoft Points, contains the three maps previously released with the Halo Wars Limited Edition.

Bungie has announced that, in the time since Halo 3 first hit Xbox 360 in September of 2007, the first-person shooter has seen over one billion matches played online.

The milestone was hit on February 28 at 6:36 PM PST. Halo 2 has still yet to hit that point, with 768 million online matches played as of the official announcement.

In all, Halo 3 players have spent a staggering 64,109 years in the game's matchmaking system, and that figure doesn't include time spent in custom or offline matches.

"We're in awe of the success Halo 3 has been met with, but we're not done yet," reads the studio's site. "Stick around and stay tuned, there's definitely more to come."

A collection of new Halo 3 maps, the Mythic Pack, is now available to those that buy the Limited Edition of Halo Wars, with a public release expected soon. In addition, the fall release of Halo 3: ODST, a stand-alone prequel following the exploits of drop soldiers, will pack all of the existing Halo 3 multiplayer maps along with three new arenas.

Halo series developer Bungie has revealed a screenshot of the third map that will be included in the Halo 3 Mythic Map Pack, with Microsoft filling in some details.

Described as "unlike any Bungie has ever created," Sandbox features a "tiered, open-world layout" that "combines large-scale vehicular combat with a limitless amount of Forge customization." It joins the previously revealed Assembly and Orbital maps.

The Halo 3 Mythic Map Pack will be included in the Halo Wars Limited Edition, slated to hit North America on March 3, and will likely hit as a paid Xbox 360 download later on.

In addition, two pieces of art from Bungie's standalone Halo 3 prequel Halo 3: ODST were provided, both of which were previously featured in Game Informer. Due this fall, the standalone Xbox 360 game is said to pack 3-5 hours of gameplay for under $60.

With Christmas just around the corner, Bungie has released new screenshots from two of the new arenas found within the forthcoming Halo 3 multiplayer Mythic Map Pack.

The downloadable map pack should be available to some Xbox 360 owners by early March, as the Halo Wars Limited Collector's Edition--slated for North American shores on March 3--packs the three new multiplayer maps among its bonuses

The New Xbox Experience's ability to load games from the hard drive is intended to help games load more quickly or even make them look better, but Bungie's Halo 3 is an exception--it actually loads more slowly than without installing the game.

To explain the phenomenon, Bungie tapped engineer and "Chief Caching Officer" Mat Noguchi to give both a technical explanation and the "short answer." The short answer is in essence that the game has always used the Xbox 360's hard drive to shorten load times:

The Xbox 360 HDD has a section for games to use called the utility partition. Games can use this section for whatever they want to; Halo 3 uses the utility partition to cache maps as they will load faster off the HDD ... Think of it as an on demand install of Halo 3 to some scratch space on the HDD.

Asked whether Halo 3 would receive an update to take advantage of the new system feature, Noguchi all but shot down the idea. "It would be a significant undertaking" to do it, wrote the engineer, adding that it would be too great a risk for too little a reward especially in light of the studio's work on Halo 3: Recon.

Noguchi's highly technical account is reproduced in full below... Read more

Publisher Microsoft today revealed the Limited Collector's Edition version of Halo Wars (360), the final strategy game from the soon-to-be-closed Ensemble Studios.

Arriving in February and priced at $79.99--$20 more than the $59.99 standard edition--the Halo Wars LCE will sport a snazzy metal case and the following bonuses:

• Three New "Halo 3" Multiplayer Maps - Be one of the first to experience the Mythic Map Pack from Bungie which includes three new maps, "Assembly," "Orbital" and "Sandbox"
• Halo Wars: Genesis- a beautiful graphic novel by Phil Noto, Graeme Devine and Eric Nylund chronicling the first military campaign against the Covenant. The novel centers around the Sprit of Fire on a mission to discover why the Covenant are so interested in the world of Harvest
• Unique In-game Vehicle - "Honor Guard" Wraith
• Six Leader Cards - Leaders possess elite skills which can turn the tides of battle
• Spirit of Fire Patch - Start the journey as an official Spirit of Fire crew member

In addition, select retailers will award players with a code for a "special in-game Warthog vehicle with flame decals" in exchange for a pre-order.

Here now is the official Halo 3 Recon announcement trailer, fresh from TGS. The video builds on Bungie's original teaser, offering a few glimpses of the game's reconnoitering premise.

The prequel is slated for a fall 2009 release, bringing a new Halo 3 campaign and an unspecified number of multiplayer maps. It is unknown whether Halo 3 Recon will be a standalone expansion, downloadable content, or both.

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Microsoft has announced that the recently-teased Halo 3 campaign will be released in fall 2009.

The Halo 3 Recon campaign will serve as a prequel to the original Halo 3, featuring an USNC recon soldier as the hero, according to Kotaku. The expansion will also bring new multiplayer maps.

It now appears that Halo 3 Recon may receive a full retail release. Check back later for more details.

Former Gears of War film screenwriter Stuart Beattie is back at it with a Halo script, and this time he has the support of Microsoft and Bungie, the publisher and developer of the hit shooter.

"The Halo movie in its initial incarnation is dead. No one is pursuing it any more," said Beattie to GameDaily. Beattie's script, written during the Hollywood writers' strike, got Bungie's attention and the writer is now in talks with Microsoft. "I'm just a fan and I desperately want to see a Halo movie out there," he added.

Beattie, himself a gamer, thinks that appreciating the game is essential to making a successful adaptation. "You need to love the game ... I can't just adapt a game for a film unless I've played it and liked it," he commented.

The new script is based on Halo: The Fall of Reach, the novel by Eric Nylund taking place before the current trilogy of games. "[My script] sets up a world 500 years in the future and we have colonies, there's the UNSC, there's the secret Spartan training program. And you see this six-year-old kid kidnapped in the middle of the night," said Beattie.

After months of teasing, speculation and delayed announcements for its next project, Halo creator Bungie continues the mystery with the below teaser trailer.

Though the video isn't explicitly clear as to what it is teasing, the Xbox Live Marketplace offers the following clarification: "High action and deep mystery await players in this new Halo 3 campaign experience. Prepare to drop!"

The video ends with a mention of Halo 3--which hit Xbox 360 exactly one year ago today--along with the phrase "Prepare to Drop." It also hints at something occurring on 01/06/09, as seen in this screen capture provided by NeoGAF user Tapiozona, with many speculating that the new campaign may arrive on that day.

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Fueling the next round of Internet Detective work, Bungie has posted on its website another scrambled transcript of something related to its upcoming project.

Such tidbits have contributed in the past to alternate reality games (ARGs) promoting the last two releases in the studio's popular Halo series of shooters. Games such as "i love bees" used websites that were made to look hacked, among other tactics, to fill in minor story gaps in the Halo universe.

This time around, Bungie has hit itself with a scrambled transmission, headed up by an image showing the words "KEEP IT CLEAN" in several languages and a transcript of radio chatter.

Bungie fans have much to look forward to, with the studio working on three projects since its separation from former part-owner Microsoft. Meanwhile, its Halo-related E3 announcement was pushed back from the conference but no announcements have been made since. Moreover, a highly anticipated update to Halo 3 arrives later this week.

Since all of these possibilities will fuel rampant speculation, the Shacknews staff decided to do some Internet Detective Work and bring you our findings, along with Bungie's scattered transmission following... Read more

Developer Bungie has confirmed the rumors that it plans to add new achievements to Halo 3's campaign and multiplayer modes, though it warns that the information "will be blown out of context, misread and misunderstood."

The new achievements come as part of the second Title Update for the Xbox 360 shooter, which launched last September. The update will also pack several "under-the-hood changes," a new type of ban for multiplayer troublemakers, and a per-playlist ranking of player skill when it arrives later this month.

"These aren't the only achievements we're adding," Bungie's Luke Smith cautioned on the studio's site, referring to many other new achievements many saw listed at PAX. "But without proper context, there's not a whole lot else we're going to say."

A partial list of the new achievements, attainable through the game's campaign mode and Legendary multiplayer maps, follow below... Read more

A new campaign for Bungie's Xbox 360 shooter Halo 3 may be on the way this month, according to various pictures taken at PAX last weekend.

A member on the Ascendant Justice forums posted copies of pictures taken of a screen showing new Halo 3 Xbox 360 achievements. The originals, which resided in a web folder entitled "pax08," are now offline.

Cold Storage, a downloadable add-on map for Bungie's Halo 3

Of note are 6 new "Skull" achievements, referring to the hard-to-find Skull items scattered across the Halo series' single-player campaigns. Another achievement, entitled "Vidmaster Challenge: Annual," has the description "After 9/25/08, completed Halo on 4-player Legendary LIVE co-op, with Iron, and everyone in Ghosts," signaling a possible September 25 release date for the new content.... Read more

Despite Microsoft's past efforts to prevent Xbox Live account hijacking, the theft of Halo 3 multiplayer producer Joe Tung's account has pulled the issue back to the forefront.

The hijacking was not the result of sophisticated computer wizardry, but rather "social engineering," the act of creatively lying to customer service representatives to gain unauthorized access to sensitive information. Xbox Live stores credit card information, and while hackers are unable to steal that information for their own use, they can make unauthorized purchases from a stolen account

Tung is far from alone, as account hijackings are not uncommon among players of Bungie's online behemoth Halo 3. He is not even the only Bungie employee to be a victim of such thieves. But his position makes his case the highest profile to date.

Microsoft claims it previously retrained customer service employees ... Read more

Bungie recently shot down its own rumors that bots--artificial intelligence opponents--would be added to its hit Xbox 360 shooter Halo 3.

The studio behind Halo had created the bot buzz in a video acceptance speech for an EDGE Magazine award.

In denying the rumors, community manager Luke Smith blasted select members of Bungie's famously devout community as "overly zealous, froth-filled fans bathed in excitement, undoubtedly quivering at things they are looking at with a far-too strong microscope."

"There will be no 'bots' added to the game," Smith concluded, adding, "Do consider this issue a closed one. Calm yourselves down, pump the brakes, and take a breath."