Rampancy

According to Major Nelson's blog, Halo 3 and COD4 have done the top ten topsy-turvy trick again. Call of Duty 4 is on top (for the moment) and Halo 3 is playing second fiddle.

Bungie president Harold Ryan tells Variety how to be swallowed by Microsoft and emerge unscathed. Some highlights: thoughts of going independent went back 3-4 years, the preparations went back more than 2 years, and one of the driving reasons was the freedom to work on non-Halo titles.

Hippieman sent me a message on XBL a couple days ago.. the two downloadable netmap packs for Marathon:Durandal, the XBLA version of Bungie's classic Mac and PC scifi shooter, the grand-daddy of Halo, are now online in the Xbox Live Marketplace.

Bungie President Harold Ryan denied claims by Microsoft's Don Mattrick that he laughed and acquiesced with the publisher's decision to indefinitely postpone Bungie's E3 announcement.

In an interview with Eurogamer, Mattrick once again explains their reasons for delaying the event, with no mention whatsoever of why it was made on such late notice-- less than a week before the event for their exclusion from the press conference, and less than 24 hours from their separate announcement before that, too, was cancelled.

Mattrick described Bungie as "disappointed" rather than angry and tried to suggest that Ryan laughed and agreed with the decision. After the interview was posted, Ryan remarked to Eurogamer that he neither agreed, nor found it funny:

"Keeping things clean, I certainly didn't agree with the decision to delay our news until sometime after E3," Ryan told Eurogamer today.

"Bungie is always concerned first and foremost with our fans. Whenever we are prevented from exceeding their positive expectations it is not a laughing matter."

Nice to see Ryan sneak "keep it clean" in there. Now if only MS could keep things clean...