Yeah. It's a week early.

It’s been a huge news day for XBOX fanboys. The meat? Microsoft announces new HALO titles available exclusively for the XBOX 360.

HALO Wars is the next big real-time strategy game from Ensemble Studios, creators of Age of Empires. Designed exclusively for the Xbox 360, “Halo Wars” allows you to take charge of the human UNSC armies and see the Halo universe from a totally new perspective. It is being developed by Ensemble Studios. Go check out the HALO Wars website at http://halowars.com.

Peter Jackson was on hand at X06 to announce that he and Fran Walsh are creating two new interactive HALO series for the XBOX 360 and XBOX Live Arcade. It’s a brand new game based on the HALO intellectual property. For now, the will be little details about the type of game this series will be. Here’s hoping it’s a MMORPG.

Also, it appears the HD-DVD player for the XBOX 360 is going to be $200 in the US. That’s not a bad price and much lower that I thought it would be. But still, I’ve got to be convinced that I need one.

Head on over to XBOX.com for more details.

So, I wrote about changes that will have to come to MLG sooner than later, IMO. Give it a read here. [url t=_blank]http://rapture.hushedcasket.com/08/23/2006/console_gaming_versus_pc_gaming_input_device_wars[/url]The article discusses keyboards, mice, and handheld controllers and the future of MLG when it comes to changes in the XBOX 360 platform. Yeah, it's a year off or so...but so is HALO 3.

Major League Gaming, the premiere console-only competitive gaming league, has said that PC gamers are geeks and that computers are not meant for gaming – they are meant for checking your email. It’s a marketing stance from their top leadership. MLG believes that console gamers are “cooler” than PC gamers.

But is MLG going to have to change their stance soon? Will keyboards and mice be making their way onto MLG events?

I think they will sooner than later without the introduction of PC’s per say at MLG events.

You see, the discussion about console gaming versus PC gaming really boils down to input devices. Console gaming doesn’t currently support keyboards and mice as native input devices. But, one day it will. When that day comes to console gaming, you’re basically limited to handheld input devices like the XBOX controller.

I am back from Lanbex: a weekend-long HALOfest in Atlanta. I finally got to meet some people that I had only known through e-mail, forum posts, digital pictures, and voice chat. Thanks to dolbex for being an awesome host.

I took some pictures of the event and posted them with notes to my Flickr account. You can see them here: http://flickr.com/photos/ericatkins/tags/lanbex/

If you are wondering what it was like, it kind of looked like this:

Allegedly on hand were:

Ma1agate
Max Power (aka- dewbe)
Greiver
Tyrus
Sleeves
Dolbex
Furhman
Jynx
Fuzz
Liquid
Neogenics
Freewill
KP
Rapture
Mintz
Your Mom
Zergorf
Pinkuh
Aros
Schooly D
Dizzy
Foxcross
McClown
frag qu33n
Thanos
plus a few natives.

Mintz at Halo:Portable needed a guest host for the third episode of his site's biweekly podcast. So, I gave him some help. If you get a chance, go give it a listen.

Podcast found here: http://haloportable.com/206/h_p_podcast_episode_3

My buddy Midnight just won a HALO 1 XBOX tournament over in Fallujah, Iraq. He wrote about it on his blog. Nice to see that even the USMC understands that HALO 1 > HALO 2 when it comes to competitive play. Good job, Jeff.

Kids: do not give out your Xfire username to strangers for the following may happen to you. (Warning: Long read, bad grammar skills, and some laughs.)

By the way, stay tuned for more funny chats with this guy...

From my profile at MLGpro.com.

Blood Gulch + CTF + jayWHY + synide + rapture + Warthog + Blue team's base =[url t=_blank]http://useruploads.mythica.org/view.cgi?f=rapture_synide_jaywhy.wmv[/url]