Various news sites around the web have, of course, been covering E3 this week, foremost among them CNET's News.com. Here are a few items pertaining to the Xbox and/or Bungie:

Everybody loves the Xbox-- but develops for the PS2 (CNET.com):

Jason Loonyboi Bergman from Shacknews recently interviewed Chris DiCesar, Microsoft Games' group PR manager, about the status of the PC/Mac ports of Halo. In terms of when it will happen, DiCesar said it's still up in the air . He also indicates that no actual work has even begun on the port:

There's a reason why the practice of explaining how a football team could have won a game they lost-- after the fact-- is armchair or Monday morning quarterbacking.

That should be kept in mind when reading the Monday Morning CEO column at Red Mercury.

However, that doesn't mean there aren't a few salient points sneaking about.

We missed this one awhile back... on February 14 xbox.ign.com posted a story confirming that Halo will finally be available to Xbox gamers in Japan on April 25, about two months after the console launches.

MythVillage has posted that a story in the members-only section of GamaSutra is reporting that Take Two, former owners of a 19.9% stake in Bungie Software Products and current owners of the Myth and Oni franchises, is facing almost a dozen class action lawsuits that allege financial misrepresentation. On January 22 trading of TTWO was halted on the NASDAQ.

This also in from ConsoleWire: The NPD Group has just released information on the top-selling Xbox titles.

A bit peripheral to Bungie at this time, we've just been informed by St. Joan that Take Two Interactive is being sued by its own shareholders,(also see here) under the accusation that they have padded the company's financial standing :

There's a story at FunXbox that states Microsoft is now saying that 1.1M Xbox consoles have been shipped to retailers (note: this does NOT mean sold ).

Gene G. Marcial of Business Week has discussed the possible Take 2 acquisition a bit more in his latest article, A Play For Take-Two:

It's been lost in all the hype over this holiday season's console wars, but the reigning king of the living room is still Sony and the PlayStation-- both versions, in fact.

IGN has a story that puts sales of the PS2 and PS1 combined pretty close to the numbers being claimed for the Xbox and the GameCube-- not bad considering the PS2 was last year's big winner, and the PS1 is long in the tooth indeed:

KillGore posted a message in the community forum that links to a report by GamePen claiming that Microsoft has interest in acquiring Take 2. Take 2 has owned the rights to the Myth franchise since Bungie was acquired by Microsoft last year (FAQ).

Nintendo has put out a press release to combat yesterday's offering from Microsoft, and there are some interesting developments here:

Microsoft has put out an item on PRNewsWire claiming that more Xboxes have been sold than GameCubes, and asserting that it, and not the GameCube, is the best launch ever:

Ferrex pointed out a couple of URLs on RampancyHL that point to silly statistics offered by IGN's GameCube and Xbox sites. Both refer to the exact same report by Credit Suisse First Boston, yet each conclude that their respective console is winning the war.

IGN Cube reports:

PlanetXbox is reporting that The NPD Group has stated the Xbox and Halo are selling tremendously well. PlanetXbox's story reads: