Randall Glass made a new version of his infamous Warthog Jump movie, called Warthog Jump Revisited. We're mirroring the large (240x320, 30fps, 17Mb) version right here at Rampancy.

Halo was so long-hyped, so widely acclaimed, and so eagerly anticipated that it was rare to see it, as well as its rectangular abode, the Xbox, as roundly made fun of as both were in the frames of Penny Arcade.

Their criticism of the Xbox has waned some in the intervening months, although their Awards cartoon still poked fun at Halo, featuring the Xbox's flagship title next to a picture of.. of... well, a toilet.

However, in today's news post, Tycho of Penny Arcade fame does give Halo some props for its control scheme:

I got a couple mails asking about Medal of Honor: Frontline, which is kind of a sore subject with me. Being on the PS2, the graphics might not be as good as the PC version, in raw terms, and controlling an FPS on a console has been difficult for me in any game but Halo.

A well deserved comment-- regardless of what I or anyone else said (or still says) about mouse and keyboard controls being superior, Halo's controls are easy to learn and are surprisingly comfortable.

Oh, and the comic is worth a look too, for the pictures of Gabe's secret in Filth Weekly...

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):

We love the Xbox; we love Microsoft, said Jeff Brown, vice president of corporate communications for leading games publisher EA. The worst thing that could happen to EA is to wake up one day to find Sony out there by itself. But when you make decisions short term, you have to look at the installed base. It's pretty clear if you're running a business selling games, you're simply going to sell more units on the PS2.

Sony rules, Microsoft drools, says Sony (CNET.com):

The console wars are over. I liken the gap with our competition to the Grand Canyon. -- Kaz Hirai, president of Sony Computer Entertainment of America

MS to spend $2B on Xbox (CNET.com):

[Marketing director for Microsoft's games John] O'Rourke said future Xbox Live titles include an Xbox versions of Star Wars Galaxies, the highly anticipated multiplayer role-playing game being developed by LucasArts, and Sierra's shooting game CounterStrike, one of the most popular online PC games of all time. Microsoft is also preparing online versions of its popular Xbox titles Halo and Project Gotham Racing.

Online console gaming not a real business yet, says Electronic Arts (CNET.com):

Online gaming is a parlor trick at E3 this year, said Jeff Brown, vice president of corporate communications for leading game publisher Electronic Arts. This is not a real business. This is not going to be a real business until 2004 or 2005, and by then you're going to have a new generation of consoles.

A short article at computerandvideogames.com is confirming what's been said by Bungie all along, that there will be no separate Halo Online title, but the version of Halo that will first use MS' Xbox Live gaming service will be a full sequel.

In other words, Halo 2 looks officially announced at this point, even if there are no other details available.

Thanks to Louis Wu at HBO for the heads-up.

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.

The point of the MMC piece from May 20 entitled Xbox Economics seems to be that the Xbox isn't exactly a hit-- and that consoles that aren't a hit tend to end up being quite a bit less than just not a hit .

It also picks up one interesting technical point that gets glossed over a lot when comparing the approach of MS to the Xbox's design to the more traditional console approaches of Sony and Nintendo:

It appears that Microsoft is in a dangerous price war that it is losing. But what would happen if one of their competitors suddenly combined two of its major computer chips in to one chip, tripling the output of their manufacturing plant? That competitor's costs would fall dramatically, and they could drop the price of their console much faster and much lower than Microsoft could.

Sony has done exactly this with the Playstation 2. Two of their largest chips will now fit on to one chip. Sony invested $1 billion in their own chip fabrication facility. Now you know why. Microsoft, on the other hand, grabbed a bunch of off-the-shelf chips from a variety of vendors and shoved them together in an absolutely huge, expensive, heavy box that looks a lot like a PC and would probably maim a small child if it fell off the top of a TV. Even if Microsoft could combine the nVidia graphics chip with the Intel CPU, do you think nVidia and Intel would go for this? These chips are owned by different (competing) companies, and the chips are manufactured in different places. If this combination were even physically possible, it would never happen for obvious competitive business reasons that are completely out of Microsoft's hands. Microsoft's box is, and will continue to be, expensive to make, because they don't control the silicon. They will not catch up to Sony or Nintendo on manufacturing costs.

Interestingly enough, MS' approach to building the Xbox was very similar to that of IBM's towards producing their own PC: parts-bin innovation. They took off the shelf elements to put something together as quickly as they could to get in the game against Apple. And although they eventually ended up with a whole host of clone companies to compete against, today the Wintel architecture clearly owns most of the PC market. Which isn't to say MS would welcome Xbox clones... but the proprietary natures of Sony's and Nintendo's hardware designs does allow them more control over costs.

So, give the article a read, but with equal parts Xbox Kool Aid and salt.

Thanks to FunkDaddy who pointed out the article in the HBO forum, and to Ferrex who provided counterpoint.

Xbox.ign.com has a rather detailed article about what MS intends to do with Xbox Live.

All Xbox Live games will use voice communication, using a Voice Communicator module that plugs into the top slot on the controller. Your Xbox Live ID will be transportable to different Xboxes via the memory card. The system will track stats, and match players who have equal skills a good connection to you.

Developers will determine just how massively multiplayer their Xbox Live titles will be. The gaming servers are all controlled by Microsoft (and to some degree Sega with their crop of XBL games), so that the game creators simply have to request the bandwidth they'll need to get the desired result. NFL Fever can only support eight players on two Xboxes at the maximum and only when they're going to head to head. That is you in St. Louis can team up with your buddy in San Antonio to take on some schmuck in Santa Fe. If you and your friend want to beat up on Santa Fe, one of you is going to have to hop on a plane because cooperative gameplay in Fever can only be done with 1-4 players on one Xbox and opponent(s) on another. A game like Unreal Championship is going to have an entirely different set of rules and parameters as determined by the nature of online first person shooters.

No more word in the article specifically about Halo, but Xbox Live does sound like a promising service, should it deliver all it promises.

Sometime in the future, we may all have our hands on the game that Bungie originally intended to make when they began work on Halo.

And no, we're not talking about the Mac/PC version (which, by the way, will still happen, as far as everyone knows).

No, we're talking about a version of Halo featuring online multiplayer for MS' Xbox Live gaming service that is slated to begin beta testing later this year.

Louis Wu at HBO pointed out an MS press release (posted at TeamXbox) and a GameSpot article that both mention this Halo Online project.

The release says:

As for 'Halo™' and the work the Bungie Studios team is doing, gamers can rest assured: The fate of humanity is in good hands... and online.

The GameSpot piece goes into more detail, indicating that we might finally get some of the things from the original Halo press release from 1999 at MacWorld: team-based cooperative play, for instance. GameSpot quoted Jason Jones as saying that it was now feasible to build the part of Halo that Bungie wanted to do.

There are no direct quotes, so what follows in that article may be speculation, but it certainly is tempting to hope it will become reality:

After Microsoft acquired Bungie in 2000, the game's development turned to focus on the single-player experience. However, back when the game was slated as a PC first-person shooter, Bungie had ambitious plans to develop cooperative team-based multiplayer for Halo. At this early stage, Halo's multiplayer was to feature combat between terran and Covenant forces on a massive scale, and players would be rewarded for taking specialized roles such as driving and flying vehicles for teammates. The Halo world itself was envisioned as an enormous world that would allow seamless transitions between environments.

GameSpot has more coverage of Xbox Live as well.

David Candyman Candland of Bungie.net is reporting that Official Xbox Magazine subscribers received the Halo demo with their edition this month. It includes a Normal difficulty version of Silent Cartographer... apparently with a different ending...

According to a story at C|Net News.com, Seamus Blackley, the co-creator of Microsoft's Xbox game console, has resigned to pursue other opportunities.

Well, at least they didn't say it was to spend more time with his family.

The story goes on to say that:

The news of Blackley's resignation comes just a few days after Microsoft said it would miss current sales target for the Xbox by 500,000 units or more, a shortfall it blamed on weak sales in Japan and Europe. Microsoft responded by cutting the European price of the Xbox by almost 40 percent.

James Bernard, Microsoft Xbox spokesman, denied the departure would have any effect on Microsoft's plans for the console.

Well, since there's no official word-- in fact, there are official denials going back quite awhile-- take this note with a few heaping tablespoons of salt.

But Bella Online's Lisa Shea isn't backing down off her insinuation that Halo will be broadband enabled:

It should be out in another month or two, as the main core of the XBox broadband rollout. I am VERY eagerly waiting for that.

Pressed to confirm, she stated:

I'll ask them again to see if they've changed their tune recently ...

Whether it's delusion or inside information I can't say yet, but she certainly thinks she knows this is happening. How it is achievable, I don't know. We've been told more than once that Halo can't be patched in any way; but perhaps the Xbox's software itself can be patched in such a way that is transparent to Halo?

We've mirrored two new Halo movies here at Rampancy: the first is the third Halo Movie trailer from Blackstar Productions. It's available here, at the Blackstar Productions website, and from Mythica.org.

The second is a co-op film of players Bluespam, Tarrsk and OXS2000 completing the Pillar of Autumn level without any weapons at all (not sure at what difficulty). It's also available at Mythica.org.

Both have now been added to our movies page.

Thanks to Louis Wu at HBO for the tip.

Does Lisa Shea know something about Halo we don't?

That's what you might conclude, based on the review of Halo she wrote for Bella Online (thanks to Louis Wu at HBO for the heads-up).

What was most interesting about the article was the conclusion:

And, even better, you can multiplay in a way which is REALLY fun! With two players you still get a lot of screen space, and you can easily work as a team - flanking an enemy, coordinating attacks. Your marines will see this and help out. If one person jumps into the driver seat of a vehicle, the other can hop in back and man the machine gun. There is a rainbow of colors for your suit, too. When they get Broadband set up for this next summer, a whole new addiction will be spawned.

The emphasis is ours. Since we've seen the Halo 1.5 rumor soundly debunked, and there have been no solid statements about a sequel-- what broadband Halo addiction is she referring to? Does she know something we don't?

There's an interview with Max Yeroen Hoberman over at xbox.com, according to Deimos Fawkes over at Subnova.