As the philosopher once said, "we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty". Those areas certainly are a bit less defined these days, as rumors about Bungie, its flagship Halo franchise, and the Xbox it rode in on are flying fast and furious.

• Dean Takahashi, author of books on the Xbox and Xbox 360 and a columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, says Microsoft is working on portable media and gaming device to counter Sony's PSP. Microsoft's response? "Highly speculative." Thanks GamePro.com.
• Research firm In-Stat says that the Xbox 360 will eat into Sony's marketshare but that the PlayStation 3 will eventually still reign supreme, while Nintendo falls further into obscurity and irrelevance. Thanks BetaNews.
• Just about every other damn site on the web is carrying a "story" that Halo 3 isn't called that, but is codenamed Forerunner. The skinny on this apparently comes from Game Informer's April issue. The game they describe includes four-player coop and MMO-like aspects. In other words, every vaguely cool-sounding buzzword-compliant feature that's ever been announced, mentioned, or dreamed up for Halo 2 or any other hot game in the past five years but been cut prior to release, is apparently in this game. Most sensible people, even Frankie, have also already written this off as an April Fool's gag; the only real question is whether it's GI's joke on us or somebody else playing them for the fool. Which is a role they play well.