San Jose Mercury News columnist Dean Takahashi, also author of books on the Xbox and Xbox 360, has a new column up saying that a small team of developers within Bungie Studios, led by Jason Jones and Chris Butcher, aren't working on Halo 3. They're working on something else:

They are on a small project that is exploring something new beyond the Halo universe. These guys are the cream of the crop in terms of the key talent at Bungie. Without them, neither Halo nor Halo 2 would have happened. Jones took about a year off after the launch of Halo 2, traveling around the world. Now he’s back and is trying to come up with something new.

The next step is clear: we must find out the code name for this project, or invent one ourselves. Any suggestions?

Josh Rodgers and "Stosh" recently joined Bungie officially after spending time involved in other capacities. KP drew the short straw and had to interrogate them about their deviant proclivities, super secrets, scrumptious sandwiches and the use of Mat Noguchi's rage radiation as a source of warmth. Check it out.

Brannon Boren, of Boren's Syndrome fame, laments on his blog that the Wikipedia entry on Bungie Studios casts doubt on the existence of the Halo Bible.

Such a shame.

The latest Bungie Spotlight is on former community member, current Bungie staffer Cunbelin, and his contributions to Halo 3:

Well My most recent item was to remake the classic human crate, better, faster, stronger! Well better at least. I've got a long list of those kinds of items both to be brought up to the Halo 3 standards and new ones to be created. I'd go into specifics but things shift almost daily in priority so it's hard to say what else I'll be working on.

Cunbelin also gets kudos for copping to being a "rampancy snob" in the early days of his Bungie fanhood. The check's in the mail.

If you need any more proof that what goes around, comes around-- usually to end up smacking you in the face when you turn around-- read this story at Joystiq alleging that not making Halo 4 would be stupid. I saw the story linked at HBO. Interestingly enough, the only citation in the Joystiq story for the idea that Bungie has already "disproven" the "rumor" that Halo 3 will be the last game in the Halo series is-- you guessed it-- another HBO post, that one following up on forum speculation that a rumored new non-Halo Bungie title and Eric Nylund's new Microsoft project were one and the same. Nylund has already nicely put the kibosh on this one in his blog; but more to the point, the HBO post that Joystiq cites is the same one debunking the rumor about Nylund and Bungie's new projects.

So a news post at a fansite, citing forum posts at that same fansite, making a speculation based on another gaming site repeating an unsubstantiated rumor and another one citing a vague claim, somehow gets cited as a definitive source for a statement that is in direct opposition to things Bungie has already said more than once, while in the same post discrediting a previous, related rumor-based speculation.

Sometimes I think Hamlet wasn't being ironic enough.

Just in case you've managed to get this far without following me: Bungie has said Halo 3 is it. If they get their way, it will be. They didn't want to make Marathon games forever, they didn't want to make Myth games forever, and now they don't want to make Halo games forever. Halo doesn't need to be, nor should its fans want it to be, the next Final Fantasy. Microsoft will no doubt need Bungie to save its bacon once again, but it will have to be done with new properties; and if everybody is lucky we'll get a glimpse at what one of those might be fairly soon.

However, to assume that Halo must continue for another two or twenty games based on being one of the "top thirty" gaming franchises in history is just... stupid.

Expect to see this on Spong in two weeks, and then on Digg the week later, before finally making the cover of Time Magazine when they name Master Chief the Cyborg of the Year.

Spong says its sources at Microsoft indicate that a new, non-Halo Bungie game will be announced at X06 very soon:

Speaking to a Microsoft source close to the management of the entire Xbox 360 project today, we were told that, "As far as things stand, Halo 3 is the last game [in the series] and it's more than just 'a thing to say' which I know came as a surprise to everyone [at Microsoft Game Studios not involved with the decision-making process] when it was announced. A new game from Bungie, not Halo 4, will be announced soon and pre-production has begun. So if you're looking for what to expect at X06, you should be looking at that."

It seems Spong doesn't really believe Halo 3 is the last Halo game, though, as they suggest that George Lucas-style a whole new trilogy will be announced later.

X06 will be held on September 27 and 28 of this year in Barcelona, Spain.

As always, keep your sodium chloride handy while reading.

• Aleph One, the open-sourced version of Marathon for Windows, Linux and Mac OS, has a new release out.
• The HD QuickTime version of the Halo 3 trailer documentary is back up at Microsoft.
• KP profiles known Cortana-hater Jillybean at Bungie.net.
• Peter Moore told Major Nelson the Xbox 360 will get an update to add another 20 titles to the list of backwards compatible games.