New Bnet Feature Preview

When Halo 3 launches next week we will be ushering in a new and improved version of Bungie.net to blow your mind and offer an unprecedented amount of stats and features to embellish your Xbox LIVE experience. The Bungie.net team has been working overtime to cram a crazy amount of content onto the site. If you thought the Halo 2 / Bungie.net integration was cool... you aint seen nothin yet.

Chris Gossett, Bungie.net Development Lead, spoke with Team Xbox and gave them some additional details about what's in store for Bungie.net. You can check out a laundry list of features, new screenshots of the site and some insights right HERE.


This Wednesday, the first step towards Bungie.net interweb domination begins with the launch of our new framework and some infrastructure that's needed for the Halo 3 hoopla.

Then, this weekend, we will be pulling back the curtain and turning on all of the Halo 3 features. This means that starting on Saturday, if you start poking around Bungie.net, you could very well stumble across some information you may not want to see before you get the game. This would include things like the names of missions, achievements and - screenshots. Members of the press will start receiving their Halo 3 game discs later this week and there's a high likelihood that some people in the media will start to experiment with Bungie.net and upload screenshots to their gallery.

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Some image previews of the new Bungie.net. Click links to view them.

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Halo 3 How-to: Forge Object Editing

Bungie posted this:

It's a big article about the How to's on Forge. It describes alot about forge so don't miss out on reading it.


Advanced Forgery

On the surface, the Forge is pretty straight forward. Create fusion coil, hurl at friend, repeat ad infinitum. However, there are some other things that you may choose to make yourself aware of if you wish to master your tools.

Inventory and Budget

The number of objects you can place in the Forge is ultimately limited by two things: Inventory, which is the number of a specific object that you can place, and Budget, which is an overall total that keeps things in check.

There’s actually a third limit that kicks in when you’ve got a whole heck of a lot of objects on the map, but really, you need to be looking for trouble to bump into that one. The Forge will just squawk at you and give you a polite error message if you try to go above it. Don’t bother, it’s not that spectacular.

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Halo 3 How-to: Forge Basics

Bungie Posted this:

What Is The Forge?

In the beginning, there was a single sniper rifle on Colossus. And it was not so good. One of the new multiplayer features introduced in Halo 3 is the Forge. The Forge is an object layout editor, a tool to allow players to rework the various weapons, vehicles, and scenery that Bungie’s multiplayer designers have thoughtfully placed around Halo 3’s multiplayer maps. Better still, the Forge is a multiplayer editor in every sense of the word: you can enlist the aid of a few friends to edit a map with you, in the same game, over the usual gamut of multiplayer situations (splitscreen, system link, or Xbox Live.) Of course, any gathering of friends inevitably devolves into shootings. Fortunately, the Forge also plays host to a variety of novel combat conditions, and even a couple of peculiar games made possible by the lax rules and on-the-fly editing.

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Interactice Halo Diorama

Microsoft and Bungie put an interactive version online of the Diorama featured in the Believe campaign. Visit the John-117 Monument and get a hands-on look at the amazing detail that went into crafting this stunning tribute.

The exhibit is filled with first-person accounts from the soldiers who were there, fighting for our very survival. From billows of smoke erupting from a cannon to the sweat dripping from a Marine's brow, you can explore this painstaking recreation of our greatest fight, and Earth's greatest Hero.

You can take screenshots and the result make a great wallpaper. You even get to see master chief and its great. I will be posting a zip file with all the wallpapers to you don't have to. http://halo3.com/believe

Halo 3 To Quickly Push $200m In Sales

Posted by Xbox Family:

Following a meeting with Microsoft Xbox execs, Lazard analyst Colin Sebastian has estimated Halo 3 sales could quickly reach $200 million in "one of the largest and most successful product launches in digital entertainment."

Sebastian says the launch prediction is "based on our conversations with Xbox management as well as our own industry checks," with "significant preorders and broad consumer anticipation" of the Xbox 360 title.

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Unite to Fight: Halo 3 Launch Week

posted by TeamXbox

“Unite to Fight: Halo 3 Launch Week” Invites Fans to Join in the Biggest Entertainment Launch in History

The world is a mere two weeks away from the launch of “Halo 3,” the most highly-anticipated game of all time and biggest entertainment event in history. Fans everywhere are eagerly gearing up for battle. Plans are being made for vacation or “sick days” so gamers can score a copy of the game as it hits store shelves and pre-orders for Legendary and Limited edition versions of “Halo 3” are skyrocketing and are expected to sell out before launch.

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Best Buy’s Golden Gift to Halo Players

Frankie just posted this on Xbox Family

We get a lot of stick for how big Halo has become, with T-shirts, sodas, action figures and so on, but sometimes our promotional partners give you something to really sink your teeth into. Such is the case with our friends at Best Buy. And this one is BIG.

During the launch period of Halo 3, the 25th, 26th and 27th of September, Best Buy will be sponsoring the Xbox Live Gold service and making it free for everyone. Think of it as Halo Free Gold Days. That means that even if you only have Xbox Live Silver, or you picked up a 360 just for Halo 3, that you’ll be able to try almost all of the features

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Linkin Park plays Halo 3

A concert put together and founded by the main headliners Linkin Park. LP has been during their thing for years, bringing great music groups together on one tour for an all around kick-ass show. So if a few a members of the band want to get in on the Halo 3 action, whose going to stop them? Sitting down to play some multiplayer with everyone were band members Chester, Phoenix, and Mr. Hahn. And you thought you were jealous before! Being big fans of the game, the LP guys were just as excited to play as the lucky gamers. With My Chemical Romance playing in the background, gamers got to show off their Halo skills to the three LP guys, and they got to show their fans that they’re not too shabby either.

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