The Halo 3 Zune contest being held by our friends at HBO has entered the public judging phase after a few weeks of submissions. The first wave is for  the best original song and you can cast your vote now by going HERE.

A few weeks ago we announced that our friends at Halo fansite Halo.Bungie.Org were kicking off a contest to give away 4 brand new Halo 3 limited edition Zune devices. After a few weeks and hundreds of file submissions, the contest has now moved into the judging phase.

Head over there now to listen to the top 7 Original Song submissions and pick the one you think is the best of the bunch. In the coming days, the top entries for song parody, montage video and machinima video will also be avaialble for community voting.

Thanks to everyone who participated and good luck!

Frankie writes:

And like Verbal Kint's limp, with a poof, the Halo 3 Public Beta is gone. Now you have to wait until September 25th to play Halo 3 again. Start counting down.


Yes, they were right. It is "so hard to say goodbye to yesterday." And sometimes yesterday says goodbye to you. Such was the case late last night/early this morning when the giant switch powering the Containment Unit of Fun that was the beta was surrounded by top men and had its switch yanked into the "Off" position.

Barely applicable Ghostbusters references and Boyz II Men lyrics notwithstanding, we wanted to say "Thanks." Thanks for participating in the Public Beta process and ultimately helping us make tweaks, changes and improvements to a product we're excited to bring you later this Fall. While we don't really have an answer for how to cure your withdrawals, we hear patience is a saint.


If you'd like to delete the voluminous file from your 360, and you were playing via Crackdown, you can do the following:

 

 

• Go to the System Blade in the Dashboard
• Select Memory
• Select your HDD
• Select "Games"
• Scroll to "Crackdown"
• Select the Beta and then Delete.

For Rule of Three and Friends and Family it's simpler:

 

• Go to the System Blade in the Dashboard
• Go to Memory
• Go to Demos
• Scroll down and highlight Halo 3 Beta
• Select delete.

Bam.

lukems writes:

Rising above the rank and file is SmokedYeti, an internal beta veteran who recently became the first "General" in Halo 3.

While my rank hovers somewhere near Gunnery Sergeant (and likely always will), other  players have played an obscene number of games, tallied an absurd numbers of kills and achieved ranks that I will only see via stalking other player profiles on the website. One of those ranks I will never see is General but SmokedYeti has – he was the first player in the Public Beta with the rank.

It took longer to catch up with SmokedYeti via email than it took for him to be the first player to reach the rank of “General,” from the time we talked to him, he added two more stars to his General’s insignia. Turns out his rank ascension wasn’t all by chance, he had a plan.

Q: Eight hundred and three games played and you’re the first general in the Halo 3 Public Beta, maybe the most appropriate first question is “how?”
A: When I first started playing the game, I planned to maximize my levels in the match making.  Once I hit a level 50 in rumble pit and team slayer, I beginning working on my RP by playing many rumble pit training matches. 

Q: Do you play competitively or just for fun?
A: 100 percent competitively

Editor’s translation: “I like to melt faces.”

Q: With 20,195 kills in 1161 games you’re picking up 19 kills per game. What are you doing that other players aren’t?
A: Knowing the enemies weapon selection may help you turn the battle.   In general I just play smart.  By playing a large number of matches, it has helped me with overall knowledge of each weapon, layout and advantages in each of the maps as well as quick response times.

Q: What tips do you have for the newbz?
A: Some people think I am newbz.  I would say practice is the start.

Editor’s translation: “I am not telling you my secretz, learn2play.”

Q: What’s been your favorite medal you’ve picked up along the road to General?
A: I can’t think of one medal that really is my favorite. 

Q: What’s your favorite map from the Public Beta? Why?
A: My favorite map is Snowbound.  It’s a fair map – it doesn’t matter what side you spawn on.

Q: If you could change one thing about the Halo 3 Public Beta, what would it be?
A: I don’t know how I would change this but on High Ground, it seems that people that spawn on the beach have such a huge advantage. Having the sniper, rockets, shotgun and bubble shield with invis makes it so they have the weapon advantage right from the start. 

(What about the two Brute Shots, removable turret, two Carbines, Spartan Laser and Power Drainer inside of High Ground’s base? – Ed.)

Q: What’s your favorite part of the Halo 3 Public Beta?
A: A wide variety of players that play very competitively.

New vehicles, new weapons and new maps all heading toward newstands, wrapped up in the latest copy of U.S. enthusiast publication Gamepro.

Over at Gamepro, they are teasing their 16-page cover story on Halo 3. Their coverage is multiplayer-focused and reveals some new weapons, new vehicles and some maps that weren't in the Halo 3 Public beta. Additionally, Gamepro reveals something brand new to the Halo universe: Armor permutations and customization. Armor permutations and customization are a series of cosmetic changes to your Spartan that gives players another way to distinguish themselves from the pack in Halo 3's multiplayer.

Gamepro is unveiling the cover of the issue online, check it out.

Halo 1 PC is still going strong, according to a stat from Gamespy. Details inside...

Have you ever wondered if there's more of a purpose to the yellow sticker with the 25-digit product key than to sell keyboards by wearing out your old one? Actually, there is -- through a complicated, flowcharted process that ranks somewhere between alchemy and string theory in terms of the number of people who have mastered it, the process that prints those yellow stickers also generates a "hash" -- a scrambled summary -- of each, and a list of hashes gets sent to me (actually, I have to pick it up on CD from a Microsoft building) whenever a batch of stickers gets printed. This list of hashes then gets sent to Gamespy, which provides the online service for Halo PC. They make sure that only people with real copies of the game get to play, and only one person per key at a time. Aside from deterring piracy, this helps our legitimate players by allowing you to ban players from your servers, knowing that they have to pay for another copy to get back in.

What does this have to do with stats? Well, I just logged in to the key-admin site over at Gamespy to deal with a new batch of yellow stickers that was just printed, and found that they keep a tally of how many unqiue (and legit) product keys of Halo PC have played online in the last 30 days. Ready?

132,102!

This is pretty impressive for a game nearing its 4th birthday. Incidentally, this includes regular and Custom Edition users, since the CD key is the same across both versions (but it only counts each user once regardless).

Big Team Training grows into Big Team Battle and Double Team Training emerges in this week's Halo 3 Matchmaking Playlist Update.

Last week  in the Halo 3 Beta, we ushered Big Team Training into the fold and this week we're launching a ranked version of Big Team action. Additionally, we've added a nouveau classique to the Matchmaking Playlist -- Double Team Training. In Double Team Training, players will pair off and square off in 2v2 games of the Slayer and Skirmish variety. In case you've lost track of the Playlists during the truffle shuffle of adjustments and tweaks we've been making, here's the current breakdown:

Social Matches

• Big Team Training
• Double Team Training
• Team Training

Ranked Matches

• Team Slayer
• Big Team Battle
• Rumble Pit

Our friends over at Halo.Bungie.Org are kicking off a contest to give away FOUR brand new limited edition Halo Zunes. Visit their contest page for more details! And hurry, there isn't much time!

On June 15th the brand new Halo Zune is being released exclusively through Gamestop retailers around the country. It's a cool device that features custom Halo design stylings and comes pre-loaded with an array of Halo materials including concept art and paintings from Halo 3 (over 120 total pieces of Halo-related artwork). In addition, each device also comes loaded with an exclusive Red vs. Blue episode, many of their classic episodes and a variety of Halo trailers and VIDOCs from past and present.  There's a lot to like on there for Halo fans!

Now you could buy on one 6/15 for the bargain MSRP of $249.99 OR you can head over to Halo.Bungie.Org and win one for free!

You're going to have to work for it though - in order to win, you'll have to create either an awesome Halo song parody, original song, Halo 3 montage video or Halo machinima style video. You can get the full rules and requirements over at the HBO contest page.

We're thrilled to be able to provide the prizes for this cool contest but please be aware that Bungie Studios is not responsible for the program itself. Any questions or issues you have with the Zune Contest should be directed their way.

The Bungie Team will be looking forward to seeing and hearing some awesome community content in the weeks ahead. We'll be sure to share the best of the best with all of you.

Good luck and have fun!

Still waiting for a code to arrive in your Inbox? Did your spam blocker filter you from fun for the last week? Finally, there's a solution.

Major Nelson updated his website this morning with more information on Microsoft's Rule of Three program. We've been aware of folks having problems receiving codes from Microsoft and as of last week we tried to help as much as we could, but ultimately the problem's scale was just too big. Thankfully, now there's a solution. Yet another code emailing occurred this morning, so if you scan your Inbox and Spam Filter and still see jacksquat, you can call 1-8004MYXBOX and customer service will help you recover your code.

We're sorry for the inconvenience, but Microsoft is on the case.

Are some things about the Halo 3 Public Beta confusing you? Do you want to know more about a feature or why you keep getting owned in Oddball on Snowbound? Here's where to ask.

As part of this week's Weekly Update we're going to take a look at some of your questions about the Halo 3 Public Beta and answer them as best we can. Click here to succept yourself to ridicule and in rare cases, enlightenment.

IGN Comics chats with Brian Bendis and Ruwan Jayatilleke about the upcoming Halo: Uprising series of comics from Marvel. Bendis, as you may recall, is the scribe tasked with writing the comic book series, along with his artist partner-in-crime, Alex Maleev.

The interview is juicy enough to whet the appetites of any serious Halo fan. Pop along there now and check it out.

 

We say goodbye to Team Training and hello to Big Team Training.

Like any good chef we're making some changes to the recipe in the Public tastetest we call the Halo 3 Beta. This week we're making our first change to the Matchmaking Playlist . We're swapping out Team Training and adding in Big Team Training. In Big Team Training players will play 6v6 on High Ground and Valhalla. In addition to some existing modes look for some new modes in Big Team Training, like Multi Flag CTF on Valhalla. Additionally, we've made some slight tweaks to the Team Skirmish playlist that should add greater variety in the opponents you'll face.

Those Multiplayer Beta tees that surfaced at last week's press events arrive at the Bungie store.

Over at the Bungie Store, we've made the Halo 3 Beta T-shirts availabe. These brown tees sport a stylized Master Chief vaulting out of a mancannon and are the same ones you've seen the press show off.