Xbox Gaming in South Africa

Bungie is doing a great job once again at getting everyone interested in what new title they will announce at E3. If you head over to Bungie.net you will notice there's an "Alert Status" informing that clean up is in progress, along with the dubbed "Superintendent" logo. Included is a timer counting down to the date 7/16/2008 2:07:07 PM (Not sure if this is using my PC date GMT 2+). Bungie's favourite number 7 being utilised to its fullest. The most common theory is said to be a XBLA game called Halo Blue. The halo theme seems to be true as if you go into match making in Halo 3, you will notice that the Cold Storage banner is scrambled. Another interesting change is that the Halo 3 Map showing users online, shows many people connected in and around Kenya, which was a point of interest in Halo 2. As for the XBLA side of things, the line up for Microsoft hasn't been as strong and you get the feeling something is a miss.

But just to throw a spanner into the works, the people over at TheAngryPixel.com say they have confirmation from a highly placed Xbox 360 insider that the new game won't be a new IP and won't be Halo. So this would mean they are reviving an earlier title.

This really makes for some interesting discussions, and I honestly can say Bungie have done well in keeping the rumours flowing. If I had to choose, I would go with a XBLA title, most probably Halo Blue. Until tomorrow, expect Bungie and others to help churn out even more rumours.

[Update] Well it looks like Bungie has cancelled their announcement to much disappointment. At first many believed it was a joke, but unfortunately this is not the case. You will notice the previous images in Halo 3 and on Bungie (except for the startup screen) have been removed. An added image displayed below tells all (I believe the publisher is Microsoft as they still have agreements together):

From: Harold Ryan
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2008 7:00 PM
Subject: E3 Announce

For the last several months, we've been building toward a reveal of something exciting that Bungie is working on. We were looking forward to sharing that with our fan community during the week of E3. However, those plans were just changed by our publisher.

We realise that many of our fans are disappointed by this turn of events; members of the Bungie team share that disappointment. the right time comes, we look forward to sharing this exciting announcement with you. Until then, we appreciate your continued support and patience.

Harold Ryan
President
Bungie LLC

[via Bungie.net, The Angry Pixel]