HBO notes that they received a strange image, apparently one of many. Fan project? Another prong of the Iris ARG, thought finished last month? Who knows.

Chris Martin at Games First writes that between glitchers, hackers, and eight-year-olds, he'll be turning in his copy of Gears of War to pick up Halo 3 next week. Thanks Louis Wu at HBO.

IGN has put together a piece on the history of the Halo franchise; Louis Wu at HBO notes a few inaccuracies they've made, but if you weren't a Halo fan eight years ago you might find some of this "old stuff" interesting.

Bungie's Jonty Barnes, talking to GameSpot at the Tokyo Game Show, mentioned that Bungie had to triple its server capacity to handle the increased load from Halo 3. Not sure whether that meant matchmaking, or community features, or what; but from the latest podcast it seems that stat-tracking will be vastly expanded, and Bungie is aiming to keep player career stats more or less completely and indefinitely.

That's the question posed on the latest podcast at C|Net. With Nintendo's Wii and Microsoft's Xbox 360 vying for the spot of top dog among next generation consoles, Microsoft has to be counting on their flagship franchise, Halo 3, to provide that final push to original Xbox owners to pony up for a 360. Will it be enough? We'll know soon.

Hawty McBloggy figured yesterday should be the day everybody makes a Master Chief out of play doh, and that's the part she started with, apparently.

Thanks Louis Wu at HBO.

Music 4 Games interviews Bungie maestro Marty O'Donnell about the soundtrack for Halo 3, and the news is all good for fans: more music, better fidelity, more orchestral arrangements and a more interactive feel this time around, not to mention another two disc soundtrack set due out sometime.

The latest Bungie Podcast is up and ready for your listening pleasure (and your mom's); get it from Bungie.net or from iTunes. (Editor's Note: I don't see it available in iTunes yet, but I'm sure it'll be there soon.)

UPDATE: The latest podcast shows up in the iTunes feed now.

Play.tm reports that images of Halo 3 retail discs have been seen online. Of course, they're no good to owners of unmodified consoles, and modified consoles are of no use on Xbox Live, but still...

IGN talked to Tyson "Ferrex" Green about the Halo 3 multiplayer map, Isolation.

Digital Journal interviews Bungie environmental art lead Mike Zak about the challenges of designing the incredibly detailed environments of Halo 3.