Halo 3 Planet

It appears all the hype was for nothing…or was it? Harold Ryan, Bungie’s president, has posted a letter on the front page of Bungie.net, as shown above. Click the image for the larger size.

So what does this mean? Nothing really. Bungie has been known for trickery in the past, and we won’t know whether or not to believe Harold Ryan until E3 is over. If we don’t get an announcement tomorrow we might have to wait a little over a month for Penny Arcade expo to see an announcement.

UPDATE: Not only did it not show up at E3, the announcement will apparently not show up at PAX in August either. Bungie’s official statement is that they will be showing off new multiplayer content (we’re putting our money on maps), but will not be making their big, massive, much anticipated announcement.

If that wasn’t bad news enough, the Fan Party went under. It appears that we’ll have to wait for some other time to live it up with the community team.

Big news in the Bungie Weekly Update this week: Cold Storage will be released on Bungie Day (the 7th day of the 7th month [July 7], get it?), and will be 100% FREE forever. To add to that joy, the Legendary Map Pack (Avalanche, Blackout, and Ghost Town) will be a mere 600 Microsoft Points, down from the previous 800.

In honour of this news Bungie is putting on a 7 player free for all playlist for 48 hours, seemingly exclusively on Cold Storage. Additionally, there will be a free gamerpic and theme for a limited time (24 hours), and a bunch of other cool things.

The Update has other news, as well as a ViDoc about the new map. Hooray!

Two more images of Cold Storage, the latest Halo 3 map, showed up todays Bungie Weekly Update. This time they are level overviews, and they appear to indicate that the map has been essentially re-skinned and re-spaced for Halo 3, much in the same way that Lockout was updated to Blackout.

Here’s the overview with weapons and items marked, and here is the same screenshot, but without those pesky weapons boxes.

Click here to read the full story, which has more than just Cold Storage information.

The above is the first of two trailers for the upcoming machinima The Land Grab from Separate Intelligence, a group that a few of our most regular users belong to.

DamnGamer.com got the original release on the trailer and an exclusive interview with the creator, and we recommend you check it out.

Arguably Halo: CE’s most popular map, Chill Out was put on display last night by Bungie at the MLG San Diego event, the second stop on the 2008 MLG Pro Circuit. The new map - dubbed ‘Cold Storage’ - was displayed by Luke Smith and Shishka in an exhibition match against two MLG stars. The boys from Bungie made no mention of the intended release date.

MLG has kindly hosted some images from the event. Follow this link for the gallery.

We’ll be keeping you updated on the new maps as they are announced, and we might even help a few lucky readers pay for the pack.