Major Nelson, back from GDC, posted up a big guide to Xbox 2 coverage at Xbox.com. Includes screenshots, movies and info.

Slashdot is reporting that Bungie's audio team of C Paul Johnson, Marty O'Donnell, and Jay Weinland won the Best Audio award at GDC 2005 for Halo 2. In most other categories, though, Half-Life 2 stole the show. Thanks Louis Wu.

Fourteen new screenshots for Wideload's upcoming Xbox third-person action game, Stubbs the Zombie in: Rebel Without A Pulse have showed up on stubbsthezombie.com, and were later picked up by GameSpot. There's also a new page of videos showing the game in action on the Stubbs site, and a writeup of what Wideload is showing at GDC at GameSpot.

The Game Developers Conference has kicked off with J. Allard's keynote address, and the web is atwitter with news about Microsoft's next console, despite the machine itself not yet making an appearance. Here are a few links to items floating through the ethernet at the moment:

• Major Nelson has entries in his blog, (keynote kickoff, new UI including screenshots, MP3 podcast of the keynote address and finally a good old-fashioned transcript.)
• AGEIA Technologies announced their NovodeX Physics SDK for the new Xbox console.
• Xbox Live will be integrated even more tightly into the new box according to Joystiq, which is still using the Xbox 360 logo with stories even as it touts that "Xbox Next" seems to be the official moniker, at least according to some PowerPoint slides they've seen. They've also got show floor pictures.
• Lists of Xbox 2's features, including the emphasis on High Definition TV, at Eurogamer, Xbox365, SPOnG and GameSpy (second of two parts, as mentioned yesterday) and Voodoo Extreme, which apparently got it before the address from a leaked press release.

James "Fiend" Schneider of Major League Gaming has interviewed Alfonso "AYB Fonzi" Chartier. Fonzi and his teammates came to the fore with the launch of Halo 2. Thanks Dolbex.

More Xbox 2 specs, this time from GDC through GameSpy via Voodoo Extreme. The upshot? A triple-cored PPC, 256Mb of total memory, optional hard drive, 720p standard output and a new 500Mhz GPU. Yowza. Apparently part 2 of this series is due tomorrow.

In other news:

• Halo inducted into the Walk of Game; thanks Frankie.
• The usual mega-sized fan art update today at Halo Babies. Thanks mrsmiley.
• Mike Miller only has a few regrets about the latest part of his Halo 2 Legendary Walkthrough-- most of them have to do with boss battles... thanks Louis Wu.
• More Xbox 2 "Xenon" coverage from SPOnG: one, two.

Just as other sites (DailyGame, TeamXbox, SPOnG) are picking up the same rumor promulgated by a quote of Microsoft's J. Allard in a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article we heard about from HBO, Louis Wu lets us know that Bungie has deflated the tires on this one: Bungie is not increasing its staff any time soon.

Other news of note:

• First Halo 2 Championship in the UK
• Major Nelson: This is not the next Xbox
• Microsoft to give Japanese developers free rei: Eurogamer
• Another interview with Brian "SketchFactor" Jarrard from his tour of Asia; thanks again Louis Wu.

Microsoft's J. Allard commented rather off-handedly, in an article about the size of Microsoft Game Studios, that Bungie will double in size (currently 65 people) in order to work on the "next installment" of Halo. Thanks Louis Wu at HBO. (Remember, though, Allard isn't technically Bungie, even if Bungie is technically Microsoft --Ed.)

[image:9096 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]Only slightly more than three years have passed since the Xbox brought Microsoft into the console wars, and the next generation, if rumors are to be believed, will be upon us by the 2005 holiday season. Ahh.. Xbox. A console of infinite games... assuming they're all made by Bungie.

Here's a look at recent items about upcoming consoles, as well as goings-on in the Bungieverse:

• Xbox might have a removable hard drive as an option that could double as a music player.
• News.com put up a FAQ about the next-gen hardware.
• DigiTimes interviewed Brian "SketchFactor" Jarrard, who admitted that Bungie "developed some games" before Halo, but "most of them were not successful." (Ouch! I seem to recall-- no pun intended-- the award-winning Myth and Marathon series, but nevermind--Ed.)
• Blackstar notes the Hurt, Agony, Pain video he did with Arashi for HBO Lekgolos, lovingly hosted by Nof at Enraged Creations.
• Start of a new mini-series at Halo Babies that explores Bungie's various penchants.
• Frankie dishes some more details (but not too many) on what Bungie is doing to counter glitchers and cheaters. Looks like about a month (but maybe more) before solutions are forthcoming. (And don't forget MonkeyChief.
• Bungie.net also has a new top story about the use of the Havok physics engine in Halo 2.
• Bungie loses another Humpday Challenge, but this one is understandable: their opponent was the US Army.
• MLG notes the Best Gamer on Campus competition.

Frankie has clarified his post from yesterday: there'll be "plenty of warning" before Halo 2 downloadable content is available. It's not going to be today and you shouldn't hold your breath and there'll be no more comments by Frankie on HBO, you insensitive clods!

In the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Interactive Entertainment awards, the sequel to the PC game Half-Life beat out the sequel to the Xbox game Halo in every category in which the two games competed head-to-head, leaving Halo 2 with the only award that Half-Life 2 couldn't possibly win: best Xbox game. Thanks BDGamer.

IGN is spreading a rumor that Bungie is already hard at work on Halo 3, and that it will be timed for simultaneous release with Sony's next-generation console, the PlayStation3, just to try and steal the wind out of Sony's sails. A nice idea, but not much other than unnamed sources to back it up. Thanks HBO. (Pass the sodium chloride. Also, do we now have to officially start calling the Xbox a 'this-generation console'? --Ed)

So here we go again, clearing out the fuel lines as I get ready to leave the site on autopilot for a few days. A few things of note recently:

• Halo Babies' new comic cannot hide that mark.
• MLG interviews StK members Ogre 1, Ogre 2, Walshy and Saiyan.
• Game magazines suck according to These Damned Machines Are Killing Me.
• NextBox logo bogus, wireless controllers maybe in GameSpot's Rumor Control.
• The Halo Story Page at Bungie.org bounces back from a database problem.
• Funnyman122, user #5000 at Rampancy.net, submitted a nice brief summary of common multiplayer tricks and glitches which we added to the Halo 2 Trick Database.

When I return I'll look into replacing the Sony TV that I sold so that I can play Halo 2 and continue the Impressions series. I'm actually aiming for an Optoma H-31 projector because it is a reasonably priced DLP projector that's not too large or heavy, has decent specifications and handles component input via RCA plugs and also has a DVI port. If anyone has any better suggestions, please let me know; I've been comparing various units online now for several days and this newly-released unit seems like the best choice.

Today's news summary:

• Bungie's poofingers got flung by the Pooflingers in the latest Humpday Challenge. (Here's hoping subsequent challenges are less scatological. And once again, no Ferrex --Ed.)
• Lee Wilson is supposedly the 'new guy' at Bungie, but he's worked with them before, doing storyboard art for Halo and Halo 2.
• Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be m4d h4x0rs.
• People still buy PC Halo. Thanks Louis Wu.