Halo: Reach Message Board

As of March 31, 2012, Bungie will no longer host any Halo services on Bungie.net. Current Halo data will be transferred to 343 and, at that time, "all live Halo data will be managed by 343 Industries, and Bungie will no longer be able to update game stats and player service records, to host new user generated content, or to operate the Bungie Pro service." Using a peculiar bit of language, Bungie notes that "any replacement functionality" will be hosted by Halo Waypoint on halo.xbox.com.

Notice that Bungie doesn't mention whether or not such functionality will be replaced, though it seems unlikely that Microsoft would allow Halo's community features to disappear. They are, after all, a hallmark of the franchise. Because really, what's the point of playing Halo if you can't show off how awesome you are (or, as the image above illustrates, how funny it looks as your Spartan's limp corpse sails through the air).

#toys Next month, McFarlane will release what feels like the 117th series of Halo toys, this time based on the characters and bad guys from Halo: Reach. More »

Another platoon of Halo: Reach action figures from McFarlane Toys is set to be deployed to a toy store near you. Microsoft has revealed the Series 6 figurines, which include new individual Carded Figures and Deluxe Boxed Sets, will be available in February 2012.

New individual figures include Noble Team members Kat and Jun, an Elite Zealot, Brute Major and the Team Objectives set seen above. Finally, Kat can live forever in both our hearts and our toy display case!

It's pretty unlikely at this point that you own an Xbox 360 without a copy of Halo: Reach in some form or another. But if for some crazy reason you just got an Xbox 360 and you're still missing out on Bungie's swan song to the Spartans, Microsoft's got a digital version of the game discounted alongside all of its DLC (well, most of it, anyway -- the Anniversary Map Pack is sadly absent).

Perhaps, like us, you're already got your 360 outfitted with Reach and its many, many downloadable map additions? There's also a handful of Avatar clothing/items, as well as the always thrilling "Anchor 9 Premium Theme," you big collector, you. Head to Xbox.com's Halo: Reach section to see how today's discounts apply to your region.

Should Halo not be your particular bag, a whole mess of other deals are being offering in the coming days and weeks, mostly of the Hasbro variety. Major Nelson has conveniently compiled them for you right here.

#residentevil It might not seem familiar at first, but once you start wandering the corridors you'll realize that this is a faithful scale recreation of Resident Evil's Spencer Mansion crafted using the creation tools from Halo: Reach. More »

Amazon wants to keep the digital pepper sprayings and stampedes to a minimum this Cyber Monday, and has released a teaser list of its deals that will begin on Sunday, Nov. 27, and last throughout the week. So far Amazon has a few nuggets of gaming gold advertised, including an Xbox 360 250GB bundle that includes Halo: Reach and Fable 3 for $200. Check the press release for the full teaser, and make sure to read it all the way to the last sale item. We're pretty sure that's the one you've been looking for all along.

#walmart Starting Nov. 27, "Cyber Week" gets underway at Walmart. So before you rush out to the stores, you might want to look at the deals Walmart is offering. More »

A group of dedicated Halo fans have put some serious time, sweat, tears (we assume) and talent (we can see) into a coming webseries, Halo Helljumper, based on the short story "Dirt" by Tobias S. Busknell. The film series will tell the tale of one ODST battling the Covenant before the fall of Reach. The first episode is set to premiere in January. Check out the trailer above and get some more information about the cast and props right here.

#halo If you have last year's Halo: Reach and aren't interested in the Halo: Anniversary high-definition remastering of the original game, you still can get up the four classic multiplayer maps shipping with it. More »

#halo I'm not above a good multiplayer betrayal every now and then. I use my color-blindness as an excuse the way a good forum troll uses Asperger's or agoraphobia. But this guy, UnstoppableLuck, takes it to the next level. More »

#halo The recent title update to Halo: Reach has rendered unplayable the free disc version of the game given to Xbox Live dashboard beta participants earlier this year. Rather than say tough luck, Microsoft is giving all of them a free digital copy of the game. More »

Did you get one of Microsoft's special copies of Halo: Reach? You know, the ones that were sent out to test their recent security update allowing developers more space on Xbox 360 game discs. You were probably super-stoked.

Your stoke-age was halted this week though, in all likelihood, as the most recent Reach title update prevented players using one of those magic free discs to get online - and from enjoying the beta playlists designed to ease players into Halo CE Anniversary's multiplayer tweaks. Microsoft has previously mentioned that a simple title update probably wouldn't get the job done. So today, they've started giving away Games on Demand copies of the game to affected users.

If you spent any considerable amount of time with Halo 2, then you've likely stomped around the Headlong map in your billion-dollar boots, helping to fertilize its soil with a few dead bodies. A new and improved version of that large-scale map, dubbed Breakneck, will ship with Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary, 343 Industries announced today.

Some graphical tweaks have been made, but you may notice some layout differences as well. That teleporter on the Blue base's balcony has been replaced with a man-cannon and some panels have been added up there for better cover when moving from building to building. Red side's had an extension added to the Engineering Hallway and lost a chunk of the ceiling in the Office.

343 also sent word on the next big title update for Halo: Reach, due on September 21. Initially, the title update won't change anything for you, but come October 4 a special beta playlist will become active with 4-on-4 Objective and Slayer game modes. Here is where 343 will monitor games so that it can continue to shape Reach.

Feel free to hop into our gallery below to check out shots of the new and improved Headlong Breakneck. You'll get a chance to see it in person when Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary launches on November 15.

You can tab between each section or swipe with your hand. The older dash still comes up via the Guide button.

You have to respect Microsoft's endless iteration of the Xbox 360's dashboard interface. It might not always turn out particularly well, but it's staggering to look at how much has changed since Microsoft introduced this console back in 2005. Such drastic changes would usually happen in a new machine, but the dashboard goes under the knife every year.

For better or worse, Sony has done little to change the overall look of the Cross Media Bar, instead focusing on implementing additional features (i.e. PlayStation Plus).

Remember this?! How far we've come.

Microsoft invited a few of us in the office to check out an in-development version of the latest dashboard update last week. Unfortunately, Microsoft wasn't talking about the feature we were the most excited about: cloud saves. The company would only confirm cloud saves are coming in this update, and the team working on it was currently hammering out all the details. Microsoft did made it sound like cloud saves would not be an unlimited affair, but specifics are being ironed out.

Our demo mainly focused how Microsoft has been working to increase what it calls "discoverability." When Xbox Live was originally conceived, it wasn't designed to handle the amount of content that's been pushed onto server farms since. Dozens of games? Sure. Thousands? Not really, which means content ends up getting pushed into the background and quickly forgotten. It hurts everyone involved.

This update goes a step forward to making it easier to find content, through a combination of Bing Search and Kinect. You don't need Kinect to use Bing Search, but does prove useful. Say "Harry Potter" and everything related to Harry Potter on the service comes up. Ask it to sort by movies and the movies will be pushed to the front. Same goes for games, television, music, etc. It's far easier than digging into each individual application, searching desperately for a way to find what you want.

This search aggregation will not extend to Facebook and Twitter, but both of those applications will be updated to better fit the interface introduced with the Kinect last fall. Much of this update helps brings the interfaces together--mostly in a good way. If you want to tab between the different sections with a controller, you can. If you want to wave your hand around, you can. Microsoft's just ensuring there's not an unnecessary interface change that ultimately comes across as confusing.

Quickplay provides easy access to recently used games and now applications, too.

Kinect integration is all over the place now and makes way more sense. There was no clear distinction between what you could and couldn't say last time around. Now, if there are big, bold white words on the screen (which is basically most of the screen), you can say it out loud. That includes movie titles, game names, applications, etc. You can finally both open and close the disc tray, too. Madness!

One thing you can't do is call up features that aren't on-screen at the time. For example, you cannot say "Xbox Netflix" when Netflix isn't featured somewhere in front of you. You'd have to say "Xbox Video" and then "Xbox Netflix." One way around that, however, is the new "Quickplay" option.

Quickplay replaces the Games Library and comes packed with some nifty tweaks. One, it's not featured on a page you need to flick over to; it's there when the machine boots up. Two, it also includes applications, so if you want to hop right into Netflix, you no longer need to tab over the Video Marketplace for the billionth time.

I also learned what the hell a "Beacon" is at this meeting. Every time I read a press release detailing the Beacon program, I'd make note of it...then immediately forget what it was. Beacons represent the first baby step to introduce scheduling into Xbox Live, an evolution of the game invite. You can send out a Beacon to your entire friends list, asking for people to join a game of Halo: Reach. The Beacon can even be pushed out to Facebook (but not Twitter, for whatever reason). Right now, there isn't much user control over the Beacon. You cannot set a Beacon to blast out at 6:00 p.m. When you set up a Beacon, it goes out. Being able to have more hands-on control over its release would go a long way, but that's not coming in this update.

Based on what we've seen and played with, this feels like a solid improvement. There are bugs, there are features we still haven't seen and the Kinect wasn't really cooperating in our demo, but we should we have a better idea soon, as Microsoft said a beta should go live sometime in early October.

#halo The way it's looking there'll never be a Halo movie. Ah well! So long as regular humans keep making killer props like this, we're free to imagine our own. Which is always for the best, because then, they never end up sucking. More »

At its "What's Next for Waypoint" panel at this year's Halo Fest, the 343i team announced a number of changes and additions to Halo Waypoint due later this year. Waypoint will receive a visual overhaul for the release of anniversary this November. The Xbox 360 portal will get a new look, with a ...

#halo At PAX's Halo-fest, 343 Industries detailed a coming title update for Halo: Reach, slated for release sometime in October. The title update will balance several of the suit abilities, changing Armor Lock's damage absorption to be based on the amount of energy a player has remaining. It will also shorten the duration of Active Camo and allow for configurable reticle bloom. More »

At last night's Halo Fest event, we learned about a rather beefy title update to Halo: Reach that's set to launch sometime next month. The patch implements a number of significant (and, therefore, controversial) changes to the multiplayer title, with the biggest being the nerfing of the Armor Lock ability. Instead of making you an invulnerable juggernaut, Armor Lock now only prevents most of the damage done to you whilst locked, and no longer detaches stuck plasma grenades.

Other changes include: the addition of "Shield Bleed-through," whereby damage done to players with a fraction of their shield remaining can now be carried over to their remaining health; an option to remove reticle bloom; the removal of a player's ability to deflect an oncoming sword lunge by meleeing (unless they too are using a sword); and the wholesale buffing of the pistol, bringing it closer to parity with its Halo: Combat Evolved predecessor.

#slam Ben Affleck is in negotiations to star in thriller Line of Sight, which will be produced by legendary action flick producer Joel Silver. Okay, so far, so good. The movie follows an elite group of commandos transporting cargo and dealing with a global threat. That's kind of vanilla, but maybe they'll make it work. More »

#minecraft Aah, such fond memories of Blood Gulch. It was easily the most enjoyable CTF map in the original Halo, and it's never been far from Halo players' hearts; it's even playable in Halo: Reach. More »

#halo We got our grubby little hands on the latest Halo Minimate sets that hit Tos R Us this month. More »

If you've been having issues doing stuff on Xbox Live, you're not alone. Well, you are alone, because you can't connect to your online friends, but other people are having problems too.

Since last night, Xbox Live has been having various service outages, reported on its status page. Last night, it was Netflix; today, the site reports issues with creating, managing, and recovering accounts, and with creating, maintaining, or joining matches in Call of Duty: Black Ops and Halo Reach.

We're checking with Microsoft to determine the cause of these outages, and if possible the expected duration. Did the pizza guy trip over a cord, or was it something more serious? Like, maybe some pizza also got into one of the server's vents.

[Thanks, Vlad.]

The importance of nerdom in public society has increased exponentially in the past decade, with the video game industry now producing over $25 billion in annual revenue alone. Ask any random group of cosplayers at San Diego Comic-Con what the above completely customized, electronic Halo MJOLNIR Assault Armor suit is worth, and they'd probably guess in the thousands. According to the experts at History Channel's Pawn Stars, they'd be wrong.

This Halo fan is hoping to score a humble $2,000 for his spectacular suit, but the Pawn Stars won't go a cent over $200, crushing his dreams and possibly losing him a girlfriend. We salute you, Halo Hero, for testing the waters in popular society for nerds everywhere. We'll be sure to keep our fetishes in convention halls and caves -- for now.

"In Halo 1, there was maybe 30 seconds of fun that happened over and over and over and over again. And so, if you can get 30 seconds of fun, you can pretty much stretch that out to be an entire game."

Or maybe even five games. The succinct secret to Halo's success, that half minute of fun, has long been a mantra repeated by developer Bungie, repurposed by game critics, and presumably whispered by Master Chief himself before he tosses a plasma grenade into a gathering of grunts. It's inoffensive, catchy and it sounds about right. Doesn't it?

"Yeah, it's probably the most famous thing I ever said," says game designer Jaime Griesemer. "For some reason it really resonated with the community and got quoted and repeated to the point where I would hear it from people that didn't realize where it had come from in the first place! Especially with journalists." Like many of you, Griesemer has heard the phrase on podcasts (yes, including The Joystiq Podcast) and read it in several articles, such as Clive Thompson's examination of Halo 3 playtesting in Wired. "Some of the guys at Bungie were calling me 'Mr. Thirty Seconds' for a while ... heh."

If only we had paid attention to Mr. Thirty Seconds for about, oh, 30 seconds longer.

We're not 100% sure what Microsoft Game Studios head Phil Spencer is trying to say in this quote from E3, but as far as we can tell, he's just happy that Halo 4 is returning the player to Master Chief's head. He says he wants to make sure that the new game "lives up to what I think gamers fell in love with," and for him, that means being the Chief again.

Spencer says Halo Reach "made more sense to you if you were a Halo fan. If you were new to Xbox 360, 360 is where you started playing on Xbox, you understood what Halo 3 was. ODST and Reach, maybe you weren't as centered." So, newcomers want -- and expect -- to play as the Chief, whereas fans of the franchise were fine with something new.

At any rate, Spencer's just trying to make it clear that Master Chief is coming back, in both the anniversary remake of Combat Evolved, and Halo 4 next year. Why couldn't you just say that, Phil?

#halo As it did a year before, on Bungie Day (July 7), the Halo creators made available to the public the Bungie Armor and Nameplate in multiplayer, and prepared to wind down its stewardship of the Halo franchise it created with a sentimental note that hinted at future projects. More »

There are plenty of games franchises that could use a helping hand to improve. So we're going to start stealing the best bits from the games we love and figuring out how to insert them into games that would benefit most...

#ios Once upon a time, Halo was supposed to be a Mac game, but, to make a long story too-short, Bungie Studio's legendary first-person shooter wound up on Microsoft's Xbox in 2001. More »

You know, when we think about heads on fire, we don't think about Bungie's illustrious flaming helmets in Halo. It's because we could never have one; we're not Bungie employees. Now we all can enjoy the loss of tactical advantage that only comes from having a head on fire!

Bungie's giving the flaming helmets in Halo: Reach (plus a special name plate) to anyone who registers on Bungie.net or through the recently released iOS app -- you have until "the close of Bungie Day" on July 7 to get yours. Oh, and if you're wondering about Bungie Aerospace, keep wondering: Bungie's still not talking.

Hit the jump for a PSA video produced by Bungie if you're looking for some more animated coverage.