The Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) has announced that their Halo 2 Xbox tournament is changing format from 5x5 to 4x4, due to "overwhelming support" for that format. Thanks Louis Wu at HBO.

In case you've been hiding under a rock for the past few days, it appears that Microsoft has scheduled the Xbox 2 introduction-- to be MC'd by Elijah "Frodo Lives" Woods and accompanied musically by The Killers-- for May 12 on Music Television. Xbox365 (and many others, including HBO) has the story.

Other items:

• A possible Project Gotham 3 screenshot has surfaced at ourcolony.net, the site that may, or may not, be a Beast/I Love Bees style Alternative Reality Game created to promote the Xbox 2.

Today marks the start of a new series by a new staffer here at Rampancy. Sistimatic, a fan of Bungie games since the days of Marathon on the Macintosh, has looked back into the Marathon manual's retrospective on the battle at the Plain of Marathon to find war lessons applicable to Halo players today. Marathon Lessons is the first article in a series we're calling A Sistimatic Approach.

Other news:

• KP has put up a blog entry recapping the LANfest at Louis Wu's this past weekend. UPDATE: Also writeups by nukedude and goatrope.
• Xbox365 has a story on an ATI patent that might be a hint to a unified shader architecture in the Xbox 2's GPU.

[image:9163 align=left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]Xbox.com and Bungie.net have news on Bungie's map expansion and downloadable content (DLC) plans for Halo 2.

At the end of next month, there will be two maps available for free to Xbox Live subscribers, and an additional two maps available for $5.99.

[image:9162 align=right hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]On June 28, the entire collection of nine maps, plus additional materials including a documentary and a cinematic, will be available for sale in stores for $19.99; this is the item that EB Games characteristically revealed too early. On that same date, the final five maps not released on Xbox Live will be available for $11.99.

At some unspecified date at the end of the summer, all the maps will be free to Xbox Live subscribers.

[image:9165 align=left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]The first four maps are: Containment and Warlock, which will be free to XBL users, and Sanctuary and Turf, which will be for sale. The remaining five maps are called Terminal, Relic, Elongation, Gemini and Backwash.

Several sites have been carrying the news in addition to the official ones: Major Nelson linked from his blog, Major League Gaming has the press release, Joystiq has the announcement. Halo Planet, demented puppy dot com, Sector 7, and, of course, HBO all have coverage.

[image:9164 align=right hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]Bungie has also placed screenshots, one of each of the first four maps, into their screenshot section. We've also added them to our Halo 2 screenshot gallery.

Jeff Gross of the Video Gamers League writes that they have recently announced a $20,000 gaming tournament that will include Halo 2. VGL is entering its fifth season, and the schedule for this year includes events in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Orlando, San Francisco and Chicago. More information is available from VGL's website.

Nick at HaloDev has announced Prometheus, a map editor for Halo engine games. The editor isn't quite available yet, but information about the upcoming application is available at HaloDev; the team says they expect to provide updates on their progress at the site about twice a month.

Katana at demented puppy dot com notes that IWTPH2 has come up with an "unexpected" Halo CE map release. It's called Chop Chop, and is custom-made for close-quarters sword combat with DocOctavius' sword mod. See this thread in the Gearbox forum for screenshots and download links.

Katana writes on demented puppy dot com that he's going to be covering Halo Custom Edition for that site.

The Game Developers Conference has kicked off with J. Allard's keynote address, and the web is atwitter with news about Microsoft's next console, despite the machine itself not yet making an appearance. Here are a few links to items floating through the ethernet at the moment:

• Major Nelson has entries in his blog, (keynote kickoff, new UI including screenshots, MP3 podcast of the keynote address and finally a good old-fashioned transcript.)
• AGEIA Technologies announced their NovodeX Physics SDK for the new Xbox console.
• Xbox Live will be integrated even more tightly into the new box according to Joystiq, which is still using the Xbox 360 logo with stories even as it touts that "Xbox Next" seems to be the official moniker, at least according to some PowerPoint slides they've seen. They've also got show floor pictures.
• Lists of Xbox 2's features, including the emphasis on High Definition TV, at Eurogamer, Xbox365, SPOnG and GameSpy (second of two parts, as mentioned yesterday) and Voodoo Extreme, which apparently got it before the address from a leaked press release.

The nominees for the Game Developers Choice Awards of 2005 are out, and the audio team for Halo 2, including Marty "The Elder" O'Donnell, C Paul Johnson, and Jay "Man Behind the Man" Weinland are up for kudos. (Oddly enough, there's no separate category for music, and Halo 2 is up against an eclectic selection of games, ranging from Doom 3 to GTA to Katamari Damacy, so if Bungie doesn't win this one, it probably won't be Marty's fault, since it seems that music isn't the only factor under consideration here-- Ed.)

A flurry of news in the console business today; Sony says they'll make a PS3 announcement in March, and that the console will be "playable" at E3 this year. Microsoft followed suit with their-long expected official announcement of the Xbox 2 during a conference call, although it is not known if the unit will be playable at E3, although apparently it will be shown.

Meanwhile, Xbox Live hits 1.4 M members and Microsoft actually makes money.

Jillybean joins the Halo Story Page team; not surprising since the excellent writeup she posted on Halo 2's plot in the HBO forum.

Stuntmutt notes on his blog today that his lovely lady accepted his marriage proposal this past New Year's Eve; see the community reaction in the HBO forum.

Anton P Nym pointed out on our news page yesterday that Reiginko has announced a contest; participants will be asked to contribute an essay, polem, or joke and top winners in each category will receive a complete, signed set of Marathon disks.

bitterbanana over in the Gearbox Software forum has announced the release of a mod for Halo Custom Edition and PC Halo that provides a chase camera (third person view) and adjustable field of vision (FOV). Thanks VerdaFolio.