Halo 3 BETA dates revealed, Halo 3 ViDoc

[cdokakis]

Awesome, now hopefully all the annoying children will get out of my Gears of War games!

Word =)

[Spartan_X]

Sunday December 12, 2004

A very sharp MegaGames reader, with a lot of free time on his hands, has pointed us in the direction of an official Microsoft page which gives away some information regarding the future of Halo. Considering the unparalleled sales success of Halo 2, you don't have to be a nuclear scientist to figure out that Microsoft will definitely mine for some more Halo gold.

Details of MS plans for Halo 3 however, have been scarce and many questions remain unanswered. When will development begin on the third game? Will the third installment appear only for XBox 2? The information provided does offer some hints about what we can expect from Halo 3.

Ironically the information regarding Halo 3 comes from MS CEO, Steve Ballmer, discussing how secure and leak proof, Microsoft's Information Rights Management for the Office system is. The comments were made on October 21, 2003 during the MS Office System 2003 launch. In order to demonstrate the security properties of the Office System, Ballmer proceeds to give an example We're working on the next version -- I hate to tell you this confidentially but I'll have to swear you to secrecy now -- we're working on the next version of Xbox right now and we're working on Halo 2 and Halo 3, the two newest versions of the game.

Now, the plan for those things are super, super secret, top secret type stuff. I mean, they really are, in fact, because if you take a look at our competition with Sony it's a big chess game -- who's going to do what. And the team said, 'Look, we want to send out the documents about this, but we really only want them to go to very few people.' They sent those documents and the e-mail around that protected with Information Rights Management. I got the document. I couldn't print it. I was not allowed. They didn't give me permission to print it. I couldn't Print Screen it. They didn't want to give me permission to do that. I couldn't forward it and when I replied to it, it stripped everything out of the original e-mail so that there was not a trace, not a place for leakage in the system.

What the above comments tell us, bearing in mind they were made over a year ago, is that Halo 3 is already over a year in its development and was, in fact, being developed almost in parallel to Halo 2. The mention of the next XBox and the timing on Halo 3's development suggest that the game will most likely be a launch partner for XBox Next, just like its granddaddy was for XBox.

All these are things we could, more or less, guess I hear you say. True but it's always nice to hear it from official lips, they don't come any more official than Steve Ballmer, but it is also interesting to find out that MS was developing Halo 2 and 3 in parallel. The other re-assuring aspect is that Microsoft may have finally created a full-proof Information Rights Management system which however, is not fool-proof.

You can find the full Microsoft comments page by following the download tab above.

Source: Megagames.com

[KiwiSwe]

Haha so they are back from 2004... thats certainly something i got to say, haha so excited to see how it looks in may :)

[acies]

cant wait to play it :) but at the same time i gotta say those graphics after GOW look like CRAP. i really hope those are from early builds cause it looked like halo 2 with sharper textures- thats it. Anyways, anyone have a theory as to the ETA on this thing? I Think itll be out by Christmas, but something in the pit of my stomach tells me that the public beta is just a rouse and that itll be out a month after the public beta sometime during the summer. if its true , cant wait to play me some H3 on those cool summer nights, lol.

It'll be out in november, I don't why you thought they'd release it in summer. :blink: And of course if you'd read on bungie website they say that this is early alpha version things, will look ALOT better even for the beta. For the most part I am sure they're still using Halo2 resources in that video. Graphics are alot of work and are usually the last thing to be put in.

[BajiRav]

<<snipped>>

25th July 2004 ..are you kidding me ? :blink: They hardly had time to finish Halo2 at that time? :o

[bdsams Veteran]

if they were really co-devloping this along side of halo 2, i really hope this game is absurdly good, they have had enough time now to implement anything that halo 2 fell short of..

[halcyoncmdr]

I remember when H2 was being developed and a lot of features were being cut, there was talk about H2 and H3 possibly being deveolped in tandem. This just makes me think about it more now.

[pigfarmer0]

The new bubble grenade and man cannons look awesome if a little dangerous and i cant wait till 16th may :D i've got crackdown with halo 3 beta invitation thingy

[Guest]

Not sure whether it has been posted or not, but here is the confirmed control scheme for the beta starting May 16.

No surprises really.

[Remysaus]

i don't see what all that fuss was about the x button some time ago.. doesn't seem to special to me.

[Sethos]

Push to Talk? Hope that's optional :s 'Else i won't be able to move and talk at the same time :p

[cosine]

Push to Talk? Hope that's optional :s 'Else i won't be able to move and talk at the same time :p

It's funny, because Halo 2 got me in that "you always have to push a button to talk to your team" mode. Then, every other game on the face of the planet comes out for 360 without it, and now I like just being able to talk without having to press anything. Especially since you have to move your thumb off one of the sticks to hit the pad.

[Remysaus]

Push to Talk? Hope that's optional :s 'Else i won't be able to move and talk at the same time :p

you just have to press it once and the line will be open untill you stop speaking. at least, that's how it worked with halo 2.

[OhMuffin]

you just have to press it once and the line will be open untill you stop speaking. at least, that's how it worked with halo 2.

Honestly, this is the only thing I hate about Halo.

Pressing the damn white button in Halo 2 is SO annoying.

I was hoping that we didn't need to press any buttons to talk in Halo 3. :angry:

[Guest]

What happened to the mute button they had planned for multiplayer?

[+vlsi0n Subscriber¹]

I was hoping that we didn't need to press any buttons to talk in Halo 3. :angry:

I liked that better, that way we don't hear everyone in the room around the gamer talking, just more control over what's heard.

[OhMuffin]

I liked that better, that way we don't hear everyone in the room around the gamer talking, just more control over what's heard.

Everyone.... as in the four people on your team?

Unless you play Big Team Battle. But that's never been a problem since people usually don't talk in BTB.