Bungiegate

As I was watching Microsoft's E3 Press conference what I found to be the biggest surprise was not something that was announced, but rather something that was not talked about. That would be Bungie's next game. All signs pointed to an E3 announcement, they talked about it on their podcast, they teased it on Bungie day, then even went so far to to start a count down for it. But it never happened. Soon after it was revealed that Microsoft pulled it from their press conference because they wanted to "save time." For some reason I really doubt Microsoft would pull such a things for the sake of time. I think there is more then what we are hearing. One reason could be that once Microsoft had seen what Sony and Nintendo announced they realized that they were the winners of E3 this year. They could have then decided to delay the announcement for a time when they needed it to take back the limelight from Sony or Nintendo. Another reason for this is that Bungie was not ready, now I know that this is a stretch, but let's say for some reason or another Bungie thought they were ready and then found out they need more time. Do they really want to deal with the backlash of teasing for an announcement then backing out because or there inability to provide. Or would it be better for Microsoft, a company that is already hated by many to take the fall and save face for Bungie. Either way I still wonder why Bungie, who "loves" us, and is independent would not make the announcement any way. I'll save the rant on Bungie's "love" for another time.

Halo 3 Beta

So as many of you know the halo 3 beta is ending tonight. I am sad to say that I did not get a chance to play the beta, but at the same time I will be all the more surprised on September 25. My reasoning for this post is what happened during the time the beta was active. You might have heard that people used some sort of a network glitch to get into custom games. Bungie why did you even have the code there to allow custom games. Why not just release the beta with out any of the text, menus, and even the options that were not used in the Matching Making part of the Beta. One other thing why did you (Bungie) leave in all the references to the Single player levels, why not replace the names of the levels with level 1, level 2... and that way the hackers would find out how many levels are in the game. And while your changing the names switch it so that they only find a reference too one level. After this Beta if in the final game there better not be any glitches in the game. Also why did you use Crackdown as a way in too the Beta. Ether let everyone in or make it exclusive. Don't force bunch of people to buy or rent a game just to play a DEMO of a game. It's a beta for crying out loud, you should want to get the most number of people as you can. But know this is Bungie, Microsoft's slave. I have to say from a business point of view it was genius. But I don't think that should be your goal. Your goal should to make a great game, if you do that then you should have no problem making money.