According to Major Nelson's blog, Halo 3 and COD4 have done the top ten topsy-turvy trick again. Call of Duty 4 is on top (for the moment) and Halo 3 is playing second fiddle.

Bungie president Harold Ryan tells Variety how to be swallowed by Microsoft and emerge unscathed. Some highlights: thoughts of going independent went back 3-4 years, the preparations went back more than 2 years, and one of the driving reasons was the freedom to work on non-Halo titles.

Bungie President Harold Ryan denied claims by Microsoft's Don Mattrick that he laughed and acquiesced with the publisher's decision to indefinitely postpone Bungie's E3 announcement.

In an interview with Eurogamer, Mattrick once again explains their reasons for delaying the event, with no mention whatsoever of why it was made on such late notice-- less than a week before the event for their exclusion from the press conference, and less than 24 hours from their separate announcement before that, too, was cancelled.

Mattrick described Bungie as "disappointed" rather than angry and tried to suggest that Ryan laughed and agreed with the decision. After the interview was posted, Ryan remarked to Eurogamer that he neither agreed, nor found it funny:

"Keeping things clean, I certainly didn't agree with the decision to delay our news until sometime after E3," Ryan told Eurogamer today.

"Bungie is always concerned first and foremost with our fans. Whenever we are prevented from exceeding their positive expectations it is not a laughing matter."

Nice to see Ryan sneak "keep it clean" in there. Now if only MS could keep things clean...

I thought this story would fizzle out. If certain people had much any sense, it probably would have. Yet here we are.

Eurogamer has an exclusive interview coming up tomorrow with Microsoft's Xbox 360 boss Don Mattrick. They, of course, asked him about the cancelled Bungie announcement and the studio's reaction:

"Sure they're disappointed. Any software creator would be disappointed," Mattrick, boss of the Xbox 360 business, told Eurogamer at E3 for an exclusive interview set to run later this week. "Harold [Ryan, Bungie president] just laughed and he said, 'Boy, just a sign of growth inside the business, we agree'.

Last week Ryan wrote on Bungie's website that the team was disappointed by Microsoft's last-minute decision not to unveil the game.

Pressed on the decision to pull the new Halo title from the E3 briefing, Mattrick said: "We didn't feel we needed to show Halo to have a great show, to pay homage to our core audience, to have a lot of news, so it was an embarrassment of riches and we couldn't fit it in. How great is that? I think that's awesome."

Yup, that's funny stuff there. Disappointing the only developer who has so far allowed Microsoft to make money on their incursion into the living room because they were audacious enough to go independent-- and because you've got enough other stuff? Hilarious.

What exactly was that other stuff, anyway? Because all I seem to read about MS' showing at E3 now is how there wasn't a Bungie announcement, and... oh, yeah, Final Fantasy.

Offtopic: I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Final Fantasy tanks on the 360.

Well, it's been awhile since COD4 and Halo 3 did the flip-flop on Major Nelson's ranking of top games on Xbox Live, but it's happened again: Halo 3 is number one, and COD4 is number two. Again.

How long that lasts is anybody's guess; perhaps the two games will get back on the seesaw. Until something else comes along to unseat them again (however temporarily-- the only game on the horizon I see that can do this is Gears of War 2) the determining factor on a week to week basis might become DLC.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun thinks that a Halo MMO might be coming. Writer Jim Rossignol comes up with a laundry list of reasons why, some of which I don't find entirely convincing.

I'd probably play it if they made it, though. I originally thought Halo-- the first game-- would be something like PlanetSide. It'd be nice to finally see a game like that in a universe as compelling as Halo's.

Just moments ago the countdown on Bungie.net, which had about 12 hours left to go until some cryptic announcement, changed to an apology from studio president Harold Ryan that reads:

For the last several months, we've been building towards a reveal of something exciting that Bungie's working on. We were looking forward to sharing that with our fan community during the week of E3. However, those plans were just changed by our publisher.

We realize that many of our fans are disappointed by this turn of events; members of the Bungie team share that disappointment.

When the right time comes, we look forward to sharing this exciting announcement with you. Until then, we appreciate your continued support and patience.