In the interests of posterity, we've added news of Phoenix's cancellation to our Phoenix FAQ.

There was a rather ugly little row on the HBO forum prompted by some trash-talking against Halo and in favor of the newly released Timesplitters 2 for the Xbox. However, one good thing did come out of it: Scalrag posted a rather even-handed comparison of the two games, and what he likes/dislikes about each:

The single-player story is a joke. The evil Timesplitters hide the powerful Time Crystals in various points throughout history...and then leave them there. They don't bother hanging around to make sure the crystals aren't found, they just assume that they'll be safe and move on. Good villains are hard to come by, but these guys are borderline incompetent. [...] TS2 was designed to be a multiplayer experience, with a single-player game tacked on for additional interest. Halo works the other way around. Both games are very good at what they do best.

Don't bother with the rest of the thread, but take a look at that post if you like Halo and think you might want Timesplitters 2.

Achronos has posted Bungie's Team Tournament Strategy Guide at Bungie.net in preparation for the Halo Winter Season at iGames. Go check it out.

Emildux posted a writeup of the recently completed Running Riot Invitational Halo tournament in the Great Lakes region. A team called The Specialists walked off with the $1,000 first prize. Thanks again Louis Wu.

Louis Wu has put up his own analysis of the Xbox Live Bootcamp event over at HBO. There are pictures as well as a set of links to other XBL Bootcamp stories at other sites.

The bottom line for Halo fans? As follows, and I'm putting this in just so we have mention of it on our front page:

So what does all this mean to the average Halo player? (After all, this is a Halo site.) Well, for now, nothing. Halo: Combat Evolved is not Xbox Live-compatible, and almost certainly never will be. Halo 2 will have full XBL support, but won't be out for over a year. However, online gaming is hot, and will likely remain hot for the forseeable future.

Of all the games on XBL right now, Unreal Championship is likely to be of the most interest to Halo fans until the real thing is out in 2003.

Miguel Freewill Chavez pointed out in HBO's forum that PlanetGameCube has a story on their recent trip to the Xbox Live Boot Camp, and it's got pictures from inside Bungie where you can see the offices and spot spot Matt Soell and Ed Fries, as well as what looks like Marty O'Donnell's work space. And, of course, there was mention made of those other guys who were also at the event:

The non-Xbox people (yes, I spoke up quite a bit) had quite a few interesting suggestions for Xbox 2, even though Tycho from Penny Arcade suggested blowjobs immediately (which I still think is a great idea).

Speaking from a former Soviet country, I can say it would definitely be difficult to get an import license for equipment with those capabilities.

From Blackstar Productions:

Ben Dussault created a great HALO video using HALO game footage and music from the film The Rock . Blackstar Productions provided the compression and hosting. Check it out.

Thanks Blackstar.You can see the new movie at the BSP site.

Bungie's own Matt Soell was kind enough to exchange a few words with Rampancy recently about the cancellation of the mysterious Project Phoenix.

Rampancy: How far in the development process did Phoenix get?

Matt: This is a tough question to answer. As with the early stages of Halo's development, we investigated and discarded a lot of ideas, which took a long time. We were still a long way from beta.

Rampancy:Was Phoenix its own engine, or based on Halo?

Matt: The original basis was the Halo engine, but like Halo (which began as an evolution of the Myth engine) there were significant differences between Phoenix's engine and the original code.

Rampancy: Is Phoenix being cancelled because of problems with Phoenix, or because another project is more attractive?

Matt: It's cancelled because it wasn't up to par. It wasn't a question of ability - we had a design and we could have finished the game. But making the game consistently fun was a problem, and in the end we decided to wipe the slate clean and start anew. But it didn't hurt that there was this new idea for the team to jump on. So I guess the answer to this question is a little bit of both.

Rampancy: What is that other project, what is so interesting about it, and will it be out by Christmas 2004? Will it be targeted for Xbox 1 or Xbox 2? (Given that consoles tend to have life cycles of about 3 years, I'll assume that by then the original will be a bit long in the tooth).

Matt: I'd probably be executed if I divulged anything about the new project now. We're just a few weeks into development, so I can't speculate on release dates. The team is still using standard Xbox dev kits, just like the Halo 2 team.

Rampancy: Will the new project be XBL enabled?

Matt: It's too early for me to answer that.

Matt Soell has posted an article at Bungie.net about the Halo Winter Season tournament being run by a collection of players who felt that there was a wider audience for Halo tourneys than the one served by the recent Halo National Championships.

The Winter Season is being held at iGames locations across North America, and will consist of a series of four-man single-elimination tournaments.

There's a nice and detailed Q&A with Jester from the Psyjnir Complex there about the genesis of the tournament, be sure to check it out.

Michigan State University, Microsoft, and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) are sponsoring a 3x3 Halo tournament at 6 PM Eastern time on November 7th. Cost is $5 per person. Complete information on location, rules and prizes are available at the link above. Thanks to Louis Wu at HBO for the notice.