Voodoo Extreme wonders whether Xbox demand is really as high as Microsoft says, or whether supply is being restrained in anticipation of the sequel's release. Only the Shadow knows.

Jeff Gross of the Video Gamers League writes that they have recently announced a $20,000 gaming tournament that will include Halo 2. VGL is entering its fifth season, and the schedule for this year includes events in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Orlando, San Francisco and Chicago. More information is available from VGL's website.

Mike Miller continues his Legendary Walkthrough of Halo 2; up this time is Quarantine Zone. Like the previous level, Sacred Icon, mostly he just runs right through it, and wonders why, with air transport available, the Covenant don't think of that themselves:

I guess there's no point in wondering why the phantom didn't just drop us off here to begin with. The Covenant probably execute their officers for asking questions like that.

Indeed. In addition, there is a really neat hiding place in the final gondola, demonstrated via QuickTime. Thanks Louis Wu at HBO.

Nick at HaloDev has announced Prometheus, a map editor for Halo engine games. The editor isn't quite available yet, but information about the upcoming application is available at HaloDev; the team says they expect to provide updates on their progress at the site about twice a month.

A few news items before I logon to XBL:

• Tom's Hardware has part two of an interview with Microsoft's J. Allard about the Xbox 2.
• Over at SacredIcon.com, prometheus has a piece on Halo machinima in his blog, Truth and Rationalization. Some interesting ideas here, and we may put up a rebuttal later.
• Joystiq is running a contest drawing on April 1; a free year of Xbox Live is on offer.

Having finally gotten a halfway decent Internet connection at home, I'm at last able to actually connect to Xbox Live and have my worst fears about my Halo-playing ability confirmed.

Xbox365 suggests that Microsoft's new Xbox power cable may have actually made the problem worse, linking to user accounts in their forum.

Frankie's Weekly What's What Update is mostly about what Bungie is doing to deter cheaters and how close they are to releasing the fixes they've been working on. Very soon now. There's also a mention of the DLC-- just that it will be announced well in advance, and be made available to users of Xbox Live and other Halo 2 owners as well.

In a surprise move, the identity of this week's Humpday Challenge opponents was revealed in the latest Penny Arcade comic. As Gabe and Tycho feared, Bungie did indeed want to play Slayer, and ended up schooling the Penny Arcade duo and their friends, winning all three games with kill ratios of about 2:1. Frankie's writeup is up at Bungie.net now. Bungie's team included Shishka, Frankie, Bentllama, Evil Otto and Achronos.

SPOnG is reporting that they're now convinced that the name of Microsoft's second-iteration gaming console will be Xbox 360, having apparently gotten the information from a mole in a focus group that met yesterday in London. The group wasn't there to choose the name itself, but to choose among these possible slogans:

The three lead contenders to be offered by the best in media and marketing to date are - somewhat depressingly - Xbox 360: Amplify Yourself!; Xbox 360: You're Next!; and Xbox 360: Shine! Really, that's what they're working with right now.

The reaction to the name Xbox 360 was in itself a sticking point. "Will it come with some kind of 360 degree headset?" was the first question asked upon the announcement of the name. The answer, somewhat unsurprisingly, was no.

And News.com also notes today that Yahoo is unveiling its blogging and social network services, to be called Yahoo 360. (Later today we'll be announcing Rampancy 360, a new 3d website theme designed to infiltrate your mind with rampant subliminal messages. Stay tuned--Ed.)

Xbox's Major Nelson asks Do You Skype and reveals his SkypeID, unsurprisingly, is majornelson. (You need your browser configured so that Skype handles callto:// URLs for that link to work --Ed.)

Louis Wu, courtesy of Dan Chosich's tipoff, points us to Gamasutra's freely-availably printer-friendly version of Handling Complexity in the Halo 2 AI, the GDC 2005 presentation by Bungie's Damian Isla. Lots of interesting diagrams.

IGN has an article up entitled Everything You Wanted to Know About the Xbox 2, with nary a mention of Bungie or the Halo series. They believe that MS plans to have as many as 40 titles out within 2-3 months of the new console's launch. (However, there's little doubt that without Bungie's Halo, the original console would not even have fared as well as it did. What is Bungie cooking up for the new box, and when could it possibly be ready? --Ed.)

synide writes at MLG that the finals are now underway; the story has Video On Demand links.

[image:9123 align=left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] Joystiq points to a page at Engadget showing an image that purports to be a leaked picture of Microsoft's upcoming Xbox 2, codenamed "Xenon" but that its sources say is actually a decoy.