Rampancy

Matt Soell's weekly HALO update went to Halo.Bungie.Org this week. Here are some of its highlights:

- Chucky has made great strides toward getting breakable surfaces in the game.

- Aiming works better; you can no longer target enemies hiding behind objects, but you can target enemies in moving vehicles.

- There's a snazzy new muzzle flash for the pistol and new ammo casings for pistol rounds. If you were to look at the back of a pistol casing in midair, you'd be able to read the words on the back of it, and see that the firing pin hits slightly ff-center.

There's lots more, so check it out for yourself.

Char has found some insanely beautiful images in TIF format of HALO. The GameStock images are now available at XBox.com and boy are they big. The image sizes are 1920x1440 at 300 resolutions and weigh in at around 8 MB. It'll take a while to download, but they're absolutely stunning.

This is sort-of a strange headline, but it nonetheless appears to be the case. There are indications that Microsoft's prime competitors in the console market are feeling a mite bit threatened, and are responding by using what many US computer users would describe as Microsoftian tactics in order to discourage retail vendors from promoting the Xbox.

First, Nintendo. This letter has been cited by a few sources in the gaming industry, where Nintendo reminds retailers rather strongly that Nintendo products are still a major source of their income, questions the wisdom of promoting an alleged new product , (The Xbox) and suggests that Microsoft has little reason to care about the success of retailers at the present time. IGN's GameCube site secured an interview with Nintendo of America's VP of Sales and Maketing, in which NOA continues to spin and push the issue.

Sony may not be sitting idly by... and in light of their failure to supply Playstation 2s in volume, they may even be a little more desparate. There are some reports (See here) floating around the 'Net that Sony has threatened to withold PSX2s and possibly other Sony products to retailers who promote the Xbox. This may not be a new strategy for Sony, as evidenced by this report. Additionally, Char speaks up in our forum with the following information:

I was talking to a guy at EB and he confirmed the same sony threats. The difference for him was that he told sony to basically Kiss his @$$. Other than the doctored screenshots MS is actually starting to look good in this whole console race.

Some would call it irony, but this really goes to show that big corporations pretty much use the same tactics in order to gain or maintain a grip upon their desired markets.

• Forum: [OT] Nintendo Threatens Retailers

• Forum: Sony may be trying to muscle out the Xbox too

Mark Levin performed an excellent and detailed chronological analysis of items he noted in the Gamestock footage, and then cross posted it both here and for our brothers in arms at HBO.

Joe Staten, the gent you see playing Halo in the Gamestock movie, spoke up on a few points about his performance. For maximum effect, things were a bit more choreographed between the music and his actions. He also describes, among other things, how the Xbox controller can alter the assault rifle's rate of fire.

Jaime Griesemer, AKA Case and one of Halo's designers, poked into the HBO forum to confirm that the AI had been dumbed down a bit. As he put it in an earlier post, We had to, it kept kicking Joe's ass! Case then goes on to assert his unwavering confidence about Halo's AI:

I was watching one of the guys we brought in for usability testing play. He thought he was doing ok, then he suddenly shouts YOU SNEAKY BASTARDS! as the Covenant surrounded him and then hunted him down. To me, the AI is the most exciting part of the game and the one part I am most confident people will be happy with.

Sounds like Butcher, Bungie's apparent AI guru, is doing a great job... I guess we'll keep him!

• Forum: Comments on the movie