Yesterday Microsoft announced a new holiday bundle and that was all fine and dandy, but someone over in Spain had to go and ruin all the fun. What you see above is a purported Halo 3 bundle purchased in Spain. The console is a lowly 20GB version with an HDMI port (no cable) and the Spaniard who purchased it claims to have paid $540. That’s pretty steep considering the Elite system is $450 and the Halo 3 model is $400. It looks legit, but will it make its way here? Hasn’t Microsoft sold all the copies of the Halo 3? Review Pack XBOX 360 + HALO 3 (Fotos Inside) [via Joystiq] → Read More
Shooting video game guns for Jesus (SVGGFJ) I remember when churches used to encourage young men to take up arms for the cross, telling them to raze faraway towns because their people prayed to a different man in the sky than they did. Now churches have to haul out Halo 3 just to get Johnny Runnynose to show up on Wednesday evenings. Yup, the Times sent a guy to the middle of nowhere to report on a trend that’s sweeping the nation: using the violent video game to lure teenage boys into churches. The idea is that once you’ve got them inside the church doors shooting each other, it’s easy to teach them about religious stuff. You know, honor they mother and they father, thou shall not kill, thou shall not participate in message board flame wars, etc. I don’t know, it’s a fairly interesting read, with some church higher ups freaking out at the thought of using violence to reach kids. Others are all, “Look, how else are we gonna attract kids? Bite me.” Thou Shalt Not Kill, Except in a Popular Video Game at Church [New York Times via bit-tech.net] → Read More
http://gameroom.mlgpro.com//v/rhojIAED55g My buddy Chris “D-Wars: Freestyle” K. sent this to me yesterday and I didn’t really think anything of it because I still haven’t played the game and I sort of didn’t watch it until now. Sorry, dude. This is pretty amazing and any gamer can appreciate what BlackShadowMist pulled off. I BlackShadowMist pull off one of the luckiest sticks in Halo 3 history, which boils down to total insanity. A Cross-Map, off wall, air lift, sticky. With 99.999% of luck involved. Cannot reattempt and succeed. → Read More
AP image What’s more shocking to hear than “the Mets won’t be in the playoffs this year”? Oh, I don’t know, how about “Halo 3 doesn’t natively run in high definition.” Um, wtf? Halo‘s not in HD? ‘fraid not… → Read More
It shouldn’t come as a surprise considering all the hype and diehard fanboys who’ve been waiting a few years for it to come out, but Halo 3 did the unexpected and eclipsed Spider-Man 3 for the single biggest US entertainment history launch with estimates of $170 million. The previous record was held by Spidey who garnered $151 million over its opening weekend. Think about that for a second. It even beat out Harry Potter’s last book. This is undoubtedly making Sony quake in their boots as console sales are bound to increase and MS might actually turn a profit on the 360. Step it up, Sony, step it up. Good job, MS. Seriously, though, where did I put my copy of Halo 3? Official release after the jump. → Read More
“GODDAMNIT BRO, XBOX LIVE WON’T LET ME LOG ON! WTF.” According to the official Xbox forums, lots of gamers have been experiencing outages on Xbox Live following the Halo 3 launch. Constant freeze-ups and the inability to sign on are being cited as two of the major concerns that people are dealing with. On Digg, a user said that less than 1000 people were signed on to XBL and playing Halo 3 as opposed to the thousands of users more than were signed online before the game even came out. With 4 million pre-orders for Halo 3, it’s not really a big surprise that the service went down. And how are gamers dealing with it? You be the judge. → Read More
AP photo of the star of “High School Musical 2″ and Zac Effron How do you like that—some Halo 3 discs are, in fact, defective. The limited edition’s tin packaging doesn’t securely hold the disc in place, causing it to slip and slide inside. Hence, scratched, defective discs. Microsoft hasn’t said how many discs are scratched, nor how many it expects to be scratched, but it has given everyone till the end of December to trade in the discs free of charge. Damn—faulty 360s, faulty Halo… what’s next, a faulty OS? (That’s a joke; please don’t hunt me down.) Replacement Information [Microsoft via Xbox-Scene] → Read More
