Tag Archives: halo 3

Xbox UK head Steve McGill’s told MCV that PGR4, Mass Effect and Halo 3 – the latest three games to be included in 360′s Classics range – are “perennial” titles. He may well be right.

“These latest three additions are some of the very biggest and best blockbuster games available on any platform,” he said.

“Classics as you’d expect don’t normally generate the kind of pre-orders you’d see on triple-A new releases, and are instead steady, valuable and evergreen titles that we know customers will perennially be interested in and will continue to engage with.”

The titles are now £20 a pop in the UK.

Microsoft said this morning that Halo 3, Mass Effect and Project Gotham Racing 4 will all be £20 in Europe’s Classics range as of this Friday.

Cheap.

The company also reiterated that Xbox 360 has now sold more than 8 million consoles in Europe.

Marketing head David Gosen said the machine had “sailed past” the milestone in the region.

“As we see more and more families looking to save money by staying in, Xbox 360 continues to offer high-quality home entertainment at fantastic value and consumers,” he said.

Bungie will be releasing the Mythic map pack for Halo 3 sometime this spring on Xbox Live, and until the fated day arrives, the firm is continually posting goodies over on the official website.

Today’s offering? A haunted house and zombies.

The Sandbox map will contain a haunted dwelling called “Spooky House,” and it’s filled to the brim with flesh-hungry zombies. Exciting.

Loads more is through the link including a Q&A with the map’s creator, Shay.

Frank O’Connor has hinted to USA Today that there may be more of Master Chief in Halo’s future.

Speaking mainly about Halo 3: ODST being more than just an add-on, Frank let slip something about the hero of the Halo saga.

“I doubt we have seen the last of Master Chief,” he said.

Going back to ODST, he went continued:

“It’s a lot of game. You play the game through the point of view of an ODST. They are dropped into combat from orbit. They have a rivalry with the Spartans that is well known to the fans of the fiction. We finally let you into their boots as it were. …It’s kind of a detective story in a way. But it is much more action-packed than that.”

More through the link.

More than 1 billion games of Halo 3 have been played, according to this Bungie blog post. That’s more than we have fingers and toes, so it’s a bit beyond us.

“Saturday night, while many of us were stuffing food into our faces, plenty of folks were still playing Halo 3,” said the firm in the update.

“At precisely 6.36pm PST, in a three minute and nineteen second game of Infection on Foundry, four players participated in Halo 3′s one billionth match.”

That’s ridiculous, whichever way you cut it. There’s some more silly figures through the link.

According to this BBC report, “Xbox Live is being targeted by malicious hackers selling services that kick players off the network.”

These services, apparently, are “proving popular with players who want a way to get revenge on those who beat them in an Xbox Live game.”

Halo 3 players are a popular target for the attacks, says the piece.

Microsoft’s investigating the claims and will ban Live users found guilty of illegal player-expunging.

Full thing through there. Thanks, Roybott.

After a slight leakage earlier this week, Microsoft’s finally decided to pop the bubble shield of silence surrounding Halo 3’s Mythic map pack. IGN has the scoop.

Map descriptions are as follows:

Sandbox — Combines large-scale vehicular combat with a limitless amount of Forge customization. Boasting a tiered, open-world layout, “Halo 3″ players will be able to build their own unique game experiences using the Forge map editor. Sandbox is a map unlike any Bungie has ever created.
Assembly — Set in the heart of a Covenant Scarab manufacturing facility. With two identical bases on either side of this medium-sized map, it’s a perfect environment for both Slayer and objective games like Capture the Flag and Assault.
Orbital — A small asymmetrical map, is set in the docking station of the Quito Space Tether. One-sided games like One Flag, and One Bomb are sure to become quick fan-favorites, but the Slayer faithful will also find plenty of action on this battleground.

Now the bad news: If you’ve built up a great big grunty thirst that can only be slaked by the Mythic pack, and absolutely must own it on day one, you’ll have to toss your piggy bank at Halo Wars. Otherwise, you’ll be forced to wait until “later this spring” when the maps hit Xbox Live Marketplace.

The last time this happened, though, we got Crackdown, so we think we’ll take our chances with Halo Wars. How about you?

By Nathan Grayson

Major Nelson has confirmed that Halo 3 was the most-played game on Xbox Live last year.

Call of Duty 4 came in second, followed by GTA IV.

Castle Crashers topped the XBLA charts, with Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2 and Braid coming in second and third respectively.

Halo 2 topped the list for the original Xbox, with Fable and Star Wars: Battlefront 2 making up the rest of the top three.

By Mike Bowden

Halo 3′s stayed stop of the Live play chart for another week, proving that the old ones are the best ones. If you’re into shooters on Xbox 360.

Data for the week beginning December 8. Last week’s charts here.

1. Halo 3
2. CoD: World at War
3. Call of Duty 4
4. Gears of War 2
5. GTA IV
6. Left 4 Dead
7. Madden NFL 09
8. Fallout 3
9. FIFA 09
10. Fable II

Nelson‘s added Community Games to the Live play charts for the first time, with Word Soup the first ever top ten winner.

Full list:

1. Word Soup
2. Golend Royal Balckjack
3. Weapon of Choice
4. Colosseum
5. ZSX4 Guitarpocalypse
6. Sin(Surfing)
7. In the Pit
8. Head Banger
9. Snake360
10. Swords and Monsters

Of the normal Live charts, Halo’s holding on at the top and Gears has dropped a place.

1. Halo 3
2. CoD: World at War
3. Gears of War 2
4. Call of Duty 4
5. GTA IV
6. Left 4 Dead
7. Madden NFL 09
8. Fable II
9. Fallout 3
10. FIFA 09

Data for the week beginning December 1.

Halo 3 was the most played games on Xbox Live for the week beginning November 24, beating both Gears of War 2 and Call of Duty: World at War to number one.

Just goes to show. Bungie all the way. Here’s the top ten.

1. Halo 3
2. Gears of War 2
3. CoD: World at War
4. Call of Duty 4
5. GTA IV
6. Fable II
7. Left 4 Dead
8. Madden NFL 09
9. Fallout 3
10. FIFA 09

There’s a lengthy explanation from Bungie here as to why Halo 3′s load times are increased by installing the game the an NXE-enabled 360′s hard drive.

For the time-pressed reader: the game caches maps to the HD whether it’s loading from the disc or the drive. Hence, if it’s running from the HD, it’s reading and writing from the same source. Which means it’s slower than if it’s running from the disc. That’s the main reason, anyway.

Got it? No? Read the full thing through the link, thicko.

Speaking to Edge, Splash Damage founder Paul Wedgwood has claimed the Halo 3′s online play is an antiquated beast, and that depth is lacking from console gaming in general.

“Arguably, and this is not to dismiss what people have achieved in the past, but Halo 3 multiplayer is really Quake 3 from 1999,” he said.

“Even Call of Duty 4 is just Counter-Strike on the PC from 2001.”

Wedgwood claimed that deep shooters and strategy games had never successfully been published on consoles at all.

“There’s an amazing amount of depth that could be present on consoles, but it isn’t there because real-time strategy games have never been successful on consoles, deep first-person shooters have never been on the consoles, and so on,” he added.

Wedgwood’s currently working on a yet-to-be-announced Bethesda project.

Thanks, StrategyInformer.

US games sales dropped 7 percent year-on-year in September – down from $1.35 billion to $1.27 billion – thanks to a hard comparison with the launch of Halo 3 last year, said NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

“This is the first true monthly decline the industry has experienced since March of 2006,” she said. “It’s important to keep in mind, however, that this month’s 7 percent decline is against a month (September 2007) that itself was up 75 percent from the prior September. Last year, Halo 3 released in September 2007 and that game had a huge impact on hardware and software sales.”

Frazier added: “Overall, the health of the video games industry remains quite strong despite the rocky economic conditions. Tracking against typical industry seasonality, the U.S. video games industry is positioned to realize $22B or more in revenues for the year (does not include PC Games).”

Hardware sales were down 9 percent compared to September 2007, dropping from $545.67 to $497.98.

Software, too, saw a significant drop compared to last year, down 6 percent from $656.53 to $616.09 million.

For the rest of our September NPD coverage, hit this.

According to the latest weekly Bungie update, the developer is planning to release a video renderer for Halo 3 in the near future.

The service is only going to be available to Bungie PRO subscribers (who pay 750 MS points a year) and will allow players to take their Halo 3 film clips and render them into WMV through Bungie.net.

More on X3F.

Nothing like a bit of controversy to get things moving. Halo 3′s back in the top spot of the Live play charts after many weeks in CoD4′s shadow, following a week in which Bungie teased new upcoming content for the game.

Last week’s chart here. Data for the week beginning September 22.

1. Halo 3
2. Call of Duty 4
3. GTA IV
4. Gears of War
5. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
6. Madden NFL 09
7. Guitar Hero III
8. Rock Band 2
9. Rock Band
10. Duke Nukem 3D

Posting on the official Halo forums, Bungie writer Luke Smith (Lukems) assured everyone that the “Maddie, where are you?” slogan in yesterday’s teaser was pure coincidence as far as any relation to the 2007 Maddie McCann disappearance goes.

“As always, all of the characters in our games are fictional,” he wrote. “Any similarities between real life and the characters in our games are purely coincidental.”

“That said, this is both an unfortunate and untended [sic] coincidence,” he added.

In yet another rebuttle, Bungie’s Brian Jarrard, aka Sketchfactor, has posted a note over at fansite Halo.Bungie.org: “This is an unfortunate coincidence but there is no connection between Bungie’s game and the tragic disappearance of that little girl.”

That’s that then.

By Mike Bowden

It’s probably going to be like this for a while now. Pew pew. Data for week beginning August 4. Last week’s charts here.

1. Halo 3
2. Call of Duty 4
3. GTA IV
4. Gears of War
5. Rock Band
6. Guitar Hero III
7. SOULCALIBUR IV
8. Battlefield: Bad Company
9. Braid
10. Madden NFL 09 Demo

Edge has awarded Halo 3 its award for Interactive Innovation at the Edinburgh Festival earlier today.

Bungie’s opus shooter staved off competition from the likes of Grand Theft Auto IV, Portal, Rock Band, Super Mario Galaxy and Wii Fit.

“We hand out this accolade to the title released in the last 12 months that does most to further the creative culture of gaming – in other words, to mark out new directions for the form,” says the piece.

Well done, Bungie.

By Mike Bowden

Halo 3, yet again, has beaten CoD4 and GTA IV to be the most played game on Live in the past week. Last week’s data here.

1. Halo 3
2. Call of Duty 4
3. GTA IV
4. Gears of War
5. Guitar Hero III
6. Rock Band
7. Battlefield: Bad Company
8. Suolcalibur IV
9. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2
10. Geometry Wars Evolved²