Bungie's Halo Nation Takes Over The Universe

Thanks to jjk5 in our forums for this little bit of news you guys might like.

Today marks the five-year anniversary of Halo and to commemorate this occasion, Microsoft just revealed a few tantalizing announcements for fans of the franchise. You may have already read the details online elsewhere but we thought it'd be best to recap these events ourselves and perhaps shed some additional light on what's ahead.

For starters I'd just like to point out that all of you out there in our beloved community are now officially coined "Halo Nation." How do you like your new moniker? I suppose "Underground Army recruits to further Bungie's goals of World Domination" just didn't have the same ring to it. But between us, we know that's what's really going on. For now we'll all agree to go along with this ruse.

New Halo 2 Multiplayer Maps - Another bombshell that was dropped today was the announcement of upcoming new multiplayer maps for Halo 2. There are a ton of details we simply can't reveal right now but we can confirm that this content will be coming out sometime next Spring and it will cost something to download. We can also confirm that this new content is only going to be available on Xbox 360 and that you'll need a hard drive to download them (which is also required to play Halo 2 on 360 anyways).

Halo 3 Public Multiplayer Beta Next Spring - Perhaps the biggest bomb that was dropped today, the MOAB of press announcements, was the indication of a public beta for Halo 3 coming next Spring. What exactly does this mean? Well, again we can't really get into the details quite yet (notice a theme here?) but we can confirm that our fans will have an opportunity to play Halo 3 multiplayer over Xbox Live BEFORE the final game is available. You'll be playing a little multiplayer and simultaneously providing us with some valuable data to help our development team. We're still working out the details on timing and scope and there will be a lot more info coming in the weeks ahead. We can confirm that you will absolutely be required to have an Xbox 360. Probably not a huge surprise.

For the rest of the news and goodies, head on over to Halo Nation! (Not really)

Link: Bungie News!
Link: Neowin Forum Discussion
Screenshot: HIGH-RES Halo 3 Screenshot