Bill Gates said the title would launch to counter PS3. It would make sense, especially given how successful Halo 2 was in countering the launch of PStwo.

Microsoft then backtracked and said that the title would launch when it was ready, ofcourse that was when Sony were still talking about a Spring 2006 launch!

The Forerunner rumour was and April fools joke courtesy of Game Informer and so doesn' t need to be mentioned, but since that also included the details that Halo 2 would use a modified Halo 2 engine, that can also be disregarded.

The interesting thing is that multiple sites, most notably EB Games is listing the title for 3rd October 2006, just 5-6 weeks or so before PS3 is due to hit. That would make sense right?!

I' m not saying it' s genuine and dates are not only subject to change but when they are put up by sites like EB Games they' re usually incorrect. I am saying though that it' s technically possible that the game could not only be finished but also ship around that time. With Revolution and PS3 launching in November, Microsoft aren' t just going to sit back and watch the competition rake in the money, and Bungie will no doubt have been working on the game ever since finishing Halo 2' s map pack off.

http://www.ebgames.com/product.asp?cookie%5Ftest=1&product%5Fid=T000284

Your thoughts?

I think it' s very possible the PS3' s launch will be countered with Halo 3 - Without looking it up, didn' t the other Halo' s or at least Halo 2 come out in november? Which is really around the PS3 launch if sony are to be believed.

I' m not sure they should launch so early, i' d hope that it' d launch next year to give them more time with the 360 h/w to get as much out of it as they could.

Also, and I know it wont affect it much, but Halo 3 will lose some customers if they launch with PS3, not that many though! But IF hell froze over and sony released a super kick ass launch line up (Hey did you see that pig flying over there?) then MS would be making a mistake.

I' m not sure they should launch so early, i' d hope that it' d launch next year to give them more time with the 360 h/w to get as much out of it as they could.

Well Bungie will have had much more time with the hardware than pretty much every other developer since they are a 1st party developer. So they will have had longer with the hardware than even Epic Games who are doing UT2007 and Gears of War for the console.

Bear in mind that they will have been working on the game itself for quite some time now.

I think Microsoft HAVE to launch Halo 3 against PS3.

PS3' s delay is working quite nicely for Bungie. I' m sure despite MS' s friendly claims they' ll be giving Bungie as much freedom as they need, come November Bungie will have been pounded to death by MS to get it out and get it right on time.

I just feel sorry for the Bungie dudes. You make one decent (ie popular) game and you end up spending the rest of your life making sequels!

I hope they release it " when it' s ready" . I really don' t want to see them forced to push it out the door for business reasons.

I don' t think it would make that big of an impact, and I think MS realizes this as well. Pushing a well known and respected franchise out the door, perhaps even soiling its hallowed name, just so you can utterly fail at making a dent in PS3 sales?! I don' t think so.

Is anyone here actually bothered about Halo 3?

Not at all really, Halo one was decent, but i didnt get into halo 2 much, don' t have much faith in 3....

Nah, me neither. The artwork is great in Halo, but the Master Chief character doesn' t really do it for me...[:' (]

My bet is January-March 2007.

Halo 3 will make up for Halo 2, I guarantee it! So long as they take their time and release it when it' s ready. You will all KNEEL BEFORE IT' S GRANDEUR!!

or not

I don' t think it would make that big of an impact, and I think MS realizes this as well. Pushing a well known and respected franchise out the door, perhaps even soiling its hallowed name, just so you can utterly fail at making a dent in PS3 sales?! I don' t think so.

Absolutely - that' s what Peter Moore said himself.

Halo 2 stopped people from buying a PS Two? Hmmm ...

I agree with people who don' t understand that entire " Halo" thing - H:CE was a great (9.2/10 - the second half of that game is much worse than the first) game , H2 was OK and if H3 won' t make it right again, then it will be clear that Bungie boys aren' t capable of making great quality content more than once.

Calling them gods and shit is just stupid.

my main point of interest in the Halo series is the glitching and modding perspective. Getting out of levels, and superbouncing. now granted, i' m bad at both, seeing as i' ve never owned an Xbox. i like it because there' s such a consumer base for it. i mean, no one glitches the Neopets game, because no one plays it. When you get enough people liking or hating a game, your results are pretty interesting.

Microsoft are trying to keep everyone focused on what' s coming sooner rather than later. That' s all. Gears of War is destined to be huge, and i don' t think Microsoft want to put Halo 3 in the mix just yet because they need Epic on board for future support.

Halo 3 will be great, ...Microsoft have always listened to feedback and the mistakes made in Halo 2 will no doubt be rectified and the game will be much better as a result.

Since we don' t know how long Bungie have been working on it, we can' t know how far along it is and we thus can' t determine when it would be released. We know that Microsoft would like it ready when PS3 launches, we know they' ve already thought about it and at one point was planned to launch against Sony' s machine. Knowing that, we know that the game must have been in development for a while because Sony had everyone thinking they were launching in Spring and so Halo 3 would have had to have been ready.

Is it still possible that it' ll launch in November or December as a move against Sony? Yes ofcourse. It' s also the busiest time of the year as far as sales go and it' d be the perfect time to launch it because otherwise they would have to launch during a quieter period or wait another 12 months.

I disagree with everything everyone just said. The original post had several mistakes. I will go into some. Also, the general idea is corrupt. Halo, unlike what most believe, was one of the worst games on the xbox. I know, because I completely beat it. The reason why halo was so successful and respected by the community is because of the support given by microsoft by allowing bungie to come into the first party market. The entire series pales in comparison to games nobody buys such as ico, shadow of the collossus, psychonauts, and the katamari series. These have no sales, and it is all because of money. Nobody cares about what' s the best game or what' s the most fun game, they don' t care about originality and they especially do not care about quality, all they care about is whether or not their parents let them have it (because their parents suck) and whether it has pretty box art, is well advertised, or " Oh this guy has it and he likes it" this world is full of idiotic douchebags which feed the capitalist free market economy, and you have to deal with that. In addition, the main concept of " Halo 3 vs. PS3" is garbage, microsoft is completely the void of software development, and trying to make any first party microsoft software results in a nightmare. The beauty of the playstation series is 3rd party support, strong hardware, and a large library. Sony isn' t just the best, it' s the only next generation company that has any chance. Halo 3 will probably be worse than Halo 1, and Halo was very bad. I' m a diehard sony fan, and just because " Halo 3 is teh uber 1337" is what you think, doesn' t mean I agree. The main point of my speech is that the 360 is crap, and no title on it will compete with sony hardware. Besides, Bungie won' t be rushing anything out the door if they release it this year, this is because Bungie has been developing it since mid-2004 when they recieved the 360 SDK, and finished Halo 2, the reason why Halo 2 was delayed was because they wanted to tweak it best before they worked on Halo 3, bungie is a company that has too much money, much like microsoft, don' t all companies have too much money? anywho, once a company hits gold " i.e. halo" with minimal production fees (since halo 1 was dirt cheap) they generally slack because there is no desire for economic gain, all they want is to prevent the public from being pissed off, so once a first party developer gets pressured to produce blockbusters, and people expect that, they refocus on production not development, and restructure offices, this results in a different and sometimes unstable company organization, this will probably result in a microsoft scandal like with enron and all major companies eventually. Also, I believe nintendo is a disaster when it comes to games, and the revolution specs make them phael. Kinda going off topic, but Nintendo phaels @ lief. So that' s basically why I stick with sony, I don' t care about practical application of Blu-Ray, or the massive storage being unnecessary, all I care about is watching movies that come out in a year or so, since I could pick any movie disc, I won' t have to browse and differentiate, as blu ray readers read all media. So, PS3, will be my sole movie player, as my PS2 is now my DVD player, I don' t care about the convenience, I' m willing to pay anything for a playstation, it' s more than just a console, it' s a massive improvement and gives capabilities to do anything I want for the entire generation, not just the start of it. Up Yours! XD Now let' s get back to the part where we say " oh snap!" and run around in circles. I' m bored, I' m going to go plehy jerrys mod lawl.

^^^^^

WTF??? Utterly rediculous!

Oh and haven' t you ever heard of paragraphs?

ORIGINAL: Majikdra6on

WTF??? Utterly rediculous!

Oh and haven' t you ever heard of paragraphs?

I think they get to that lesson in 5th grade.

Yeah - that was a long and hard to read post:)

But I have to agree that it' s strange how hype and stuff can make any GOOD game into a new religion.Back in the days ,it required at least an AWESOME game to do that.

But when Halo was released as a launch title for Xbox, it WAS awesome!

If Halo 2 had been a separate game (not a sequel to Halo), it too would likely have been considered a much better game than it is. As it is, it' s just compared to the first one!

Killzone sucked ass, ...but everyone is looking forward to Killzone on PS3...

Stick in your fantasy world. The main reason why I get pissed off on forums is the same reason I get pissed off when I write essays and such. " Oh you have to put a space and indent lawl!" Screw you! Besides, halo only didn' t completely suck because microsoft gave bungie the bling and the homies, without that it would have been another xbox title. Microsoft is a big pile of feces, the more money they get from you, the worse off the economy is. I suggest not buying windows, and wait until they build a time machine so I can go back and say to Steve Jobbs " Hey Motherfreaker, Development libraries will make you bling, so to better our world, the FUTURE depends on you" Yes, I have killzone, and it does suck, but that' s because it was made in europe. Europeans that develop games are in and around russia, TETRIS WAS MADE IN RUSSIA, my point is, watch Armageddon, russians are so lazy they won' t convert metric systems for international transfers. Now I' ll just go take my bling and go back and run around in circles until the June 20th Revolution Launch, when I will personally go up to <Insert Nintendo' s CEO Name Here> And say, you freaked up man, time to go to motown word, I' m gonna up the ante you in g? And since he can barely speak english, I don' t think he speaks negro. So then I' ll tell him " Look Homie, run around in circles to pass the time, while I burn down nintendo' s executive offices, and put all the mario costumes into concentration camps" I don' t want to stress it, but all existing copies of super mario bros 3 should be burned like books promoting judaism. You know what, I' m Loopy! I' m loopy! Let me run around in circles woot woot, vroom, I' m a plane. I don' t want to express my individuality when I could simply relax and express my own appreciation for the lies sony put me through, all government and organization is corrupt, and we have to deal with that, but SONY! WHY DID YOU LIE? I heard Killzone PS3 was running on Beta Hardware at 5 FPS, So you know what? I' m sick of lies, if you want to be like capitalist political powers, then why don' t you just go away and put someone else in control of your corporation. I don' t want to have someone from nintendo who wants to appeal to the ghetto with weed prices, I just want a new leader of The SCEA branch that won' t talk BS at E3-06, all I ask is to keep american interests clean of dispute, DON' T GIVE ME THAT BRAINWASHING JAPANESE CRAP, condoms shouldn' t be in the shape of mario, they should be in the shape of condoms. Please Japan, take your fantasies and shove it, I just want clean gaming fun, not pokemon violence up in my face, as pokemon disgusts me, can' t pikachu ever say anything reasonable. He' s like a monkey yelling in my face " BLAH BLAH BLAH I' M A MONKEY I LIKE FECES" Japan is like microsoft, except microsoft is an american corporation, and Japan is a nation in asia. There I go yammering, I better not spread anymore opinions, this stuff comes back to haunt me. I really should try to increase my medication, then again, my doctor said I have the maximum dosage. I need to crawl in a hole and act like a spider. Just without forming a web around my food, and I won' t do anything stupid like build a web near a house. I would move out and travel. But that' s a different life. I' m stupid. I' m just gonna go back to that place and run around in circles. Don' t listen to me, You' ll lose your place in this massive blob of text. Too bad. Maybe I should write at the top to look at the end, but I already wrote too much so it would be hard to differentiate this portion so I' m lazy and don' t care about your feelings or opinion. I can' t believe I' m a male and I can talk nonstop, I' m so lonely maybe I should get a blog so I can have real friends...