Aero at Halo Impulse interviewed Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford about the port of Halo to the PC. Some of the answers are interesting:

Aero: Is there an alternative way to get a patch for halo CE other than getting 1000 players? Perhaps you could give us a wider range of options that the community can work towards?

Randy Pitchford: I used the 1000 player line as a publicly available metric for tracking how many folks are playing the game. What it really is about is a business concept of return on investment. Gearbox will cease to exist if it spends more than it makes. I think the best way to get more support out of Halo is to appeal to the folks that hold the keys - Bungie. Bungie owns Halo. If Bungie wants more support to happen, it will happen. I imagine they are very busy right now, though...

Well, not so busy as they were before last week, I imagine. But somehow it's still hard to imagine anything but PC Halo being orphaned and overshadowed by the impending release of Halo 2.

But perhaps most telling of Pitchford's remarks is this, although it works against just about everything else he says about PC Halo, including claims that it has gotten more post-release support than any other PC port:

As far as 1000 players, goes - I think if folks who are playing the game went out and evangelized it, it could happen. Instead, we find that the folks that are playing the game the most are also whining about it the loudest.

Doesn't that fact say something in itself? That those who play the game are the ones complaining? In other words, those who play PC Halo complain about it, and those who don't play don't mention it? That doesn't make 1000 simultaneous players sound possible at all.