The Inquirer is reporting today that MS told them at the ECTS show in London that there are plans to allow PC games and Xbox games to share codebases. The Inquirer describes this as a "shift from its past strategy".

In the past, the portability of games from Windows to the Xbox was touted as a strength of the platform. However, the change of processor architecture in the Xbox 2, from x86 to PPC, calls into question how easy it will be to share code in the future between games on the two platforms.

Frankie is back to doing the CENSORED on the CENSORED in this week's update, hosted over in the Halo Planet forum. Lots of progress to report: levels that are done or almost done, the manual is done, and people are sleeping on inflatable mattresses in their office. Sounds like fun.

OpeningAct had a better experience playing Halo 2 at Game Stars Live in London than other community members, having gotten to the front of the line in reasonable time and having a rampantly rampaging good time beging first to fifteen in a round of Slayer on Zanzibar, and posting about it in the HBO forum.

And yes, in case you're wondering, this item got mentioned because of its use of the word rampant.

GameDaily has interviewed Bungie's Pete Parsons about (what else) Halo 2. Two concepts kept coming up; how Bungie has deepened and extended the single player story (and kept most of the story out of the press, so far) and how the multiplayer aspect is now fully realized and a separate experience both from multiplayer in Halo 1 and from the single player in Halo 2:

We've made the multiplayer easy to get into with a ranking system, which doesn't allow veterans to pick off new players in unfair matches. You can play against people all over the world that are on the same skill level, which makes this game fun no matter what level of player you are.

Does Halo 2 on XBL mark the return of the comet?

There's mention of the Wideload - Aspyr deal today at Evil Avatar (story, press release) and at SPOnG.

There's some interesting language in the release that might give a small hint to the nature of the game, or at least its advertising campaign:

Aspyr will work closely with Wideload to make sure that the vision and feel of the game is reflected in all aspects of bringing this title to market. Furthermore, Aspyr is leveraging its music and film ties to create a campaign that is just as twisted and off the wall as the game itself. Stay tuned (and we mean tuned) for some interesting developments.

Perhaps Wideload is making Jet Set Radio Tuner?

UPDATE: MacWorld has picked up the news as well. Off-topic: isn't that G5 iMac cool?

Matt Brett from MuchMusic got to play Zanzibar in the E3 build of Halo 2 at this year's X04 event in Toronto, and wrote up his impressions into a little Zanzibar mini-review, as many have done as well. (Question: if they install this in hotel rooms, will they call it a Zanziminibar?) Thanks for the heads-up to Louis Wu at HBO.

Major Nelson sat on a panel about online gaming at PAX, and has posted up a report: part one, part two, with photos, in his blog.

Figuring heavily in all the reports of the event so far was the body odor (specifically from the PC gamers, it seems) and the presence of the girl gaming group, the Frag Dolls, who begged their way into some extra Halo and apparently 0wned at Rainbow Six 3.

Ryan "synide" Thompson is the latest profile subject at The Junkyard; he's also got a review of Halo 2 up, based on his impressions playing at the MLG Downpour event. Thanks for the heads-up to Louis Wu at HBO.

Frankie came back from PAX, the Penny Arcade Exposition, and posted up his experiences over at Bungie.net. Of course, along with the chance to see Tycho and Gabe in person, PAX featured multiplayer action of the E3 build of Halo 2.

A very businesslike Weekly Update this week over in the Bungie.net forums. There's no censored in sight, but lots of information on how things are coming together: final art, animations, and dialogue. Check it out.

In the London Free Press, Steve Tilley apologizes, first for his job, that allows him to drink for free while playing Halo 2 pre-release, and then for committing 6 teamkills in a 3-2 CTF win on Zanzibar:

I ended up playing a human soldier appropriately named Chief, gleefully feeding pain and humiliation to the Covenant horde during the half-hour session of mayhem and trash-talking. Our team emerged victorious with a score of 3 to 2, and I managed to limit my friendly-fire frags to half a dozen or so. (C'mon, in the heat of battle it can be hard to tell friend from foe. And hand grenades tend not to discriminate.)

Thanks Louis Wu at HBO for the heads-up on this piece.

Just a short update on the goings-on in the world of I Love Bees.

As many suspected, the Links page, that contained times in the PDT time zone and GPS coordinates, were indeed connected (most of the time) to pay phones. The coordinates were grouped in banks of seven each with a code word. If someone was there to at two positions in the group to answer the phone, identify the caller (variably Melissa or The Operator-- not all reports are consistent) and speak the group's code word, then an audio file became available for that group. Currently 23 such files are theoretically available, but I get 404 errors on three of them (eyes, reflected, and say something).

Many sites are following the puzzle now, and as the backstory of the puzzle, now explained clearly in the sidebar of Dana's I Love Bees blog, relates directly to Halo 2, many Halo and Bungie fansites are also now involved in one way or another. However, not every site wants to have discussion of Halo drowned out by speculation on the ILB puzzle. HBO in particular has a single, extremely busy forum where ILB discussion has threatened to drown out everything else. HBO's administrator, Louis Wu, doubts Bungie has much direct involvement in the puzzle, and has thus asked that ILB discussion be kept down on the HBO forum.

Now, with another 350+ post explosion of bee discussion there, Wu is asking that all bee discussion be removed from the forum completely, as none of the discussion there is being well organized, and the repetition of old information is getting in the way of the usual forum operation.

Rampancy's forum has several indexes, so it's no problem for us to isolate Bee discussion in a separate forum, which is what we've now done. Discuss away.

Some resources for those who haven't been following closely:

• A map of coordinates in the Unfiction forums. These phones are supposedly going to be called at the specified times every day. However, keep in mind that some players expect that times and/or coordinates may change. There is a counter on the Links page that currently stands at 74/777, indicating that this phase of the puzzle is far from over.
• Status Page at Melangerie. This lists the times, coordinates and code words for the known "axons" (phones that would be called) along with the status of each one and their grouping.
• Bee Blog at Netninja. This blog tracks the puzzle's progress.
• I Love Bees Blog. This site is the one the in-game character Dana uses to track progress and give hints. The sidebar now has a summary that mentions the Covenant.

Stay tuned for more updates.

HBO has put up a BitTorrent seed (and a mirror list) of some good quality footage of multiplayer action on Zanzibar at the first-ever Halo 2 tourney, using the E3 2004 build of the game. Lots of shakeycam footage has been floating around, but this is the real deal. Go snag it if you have BitTorrent. The footage if of mrsmiley of Halo Babies fame playing, and he's put up a thread in the HBO forum to talk about the footage.