Halo Waypoint now live on Xbox Live

Starting Saturday, Nov. 7, Halo Waypoint will begin previewing new Halo content on Xbox Live. The new virtual home for all things Halo launches today on Xbox LIVE, and will be the “exclusive destination for full-episode previews of Halo Legends beginning Saturday, Nov. 7. Halo Waypoint promises daily updates featuring developer interviews, trailers and screenshots, exclusive video footage, community activities and the latest Halo news.

In addition, Halo Waypoint includes a career system that tracks players’ accomplishments across multiple Halo games and gives them new ways to show off their in game exploits. Players who participate in Halo Waypoint will be rewarded with a variety of Bungie-created Halo 3: ODST Avatar Awardables for attaining specific Achievements in the game. Rewards vary from T-shirts to full sets of ODST armor. These awardables are retroactive, so if players have already unlocked the requisite Achievements, the awards will be ready for them once they enlist in Halo Waypoint.

Turn on your Xbox 360 and log on to Xbox Live to learn more.

How Halo’s tagline came to be

At The Azenberg Group’s [A] List Summit, G4TV.com had a chance to corner vice president of strategy and client services Steve Fowler to talk about his time at Microsft as the lead product manager from 2000 to 2003. during that time Fowler was responsible for the brand management on a number of action games, including Halo. Apparently the tagline for the game, “Combat Evolved” is attributed to Fowler, who explained during his talk with G4TV on its origins:

“Back in the original days of the Halo brand, before it was anything, we did a lot of consumer research. We went across the world, talking to consumers in Europe, Asia, and North America. We were concerned with gamers that weren’t aware of what Halo was and we needed to be concerned with them because if this was going to be a franchise title then we couldn’t just rely on core gamers or people that were following it since the MacWorld announcement. The new customers were going to be the ones that would make or break the Xbox, so we need Halo to go bigger than that.

You can read the whole thing on G4TV.com.

Halo Wars Historic Battles deploying in late July

According to Major Nelson’s Blog, a new add-on is coming for Microsoft’s RTS game Halo Wars, called Historic Battles. To be released on July 21, Historic Battles will cost 800 points and will contain four new maps and four new achievements.

The maps included are a 1 vs 1 map called Barrens, a 1 vs 1 map called Blood River, a 3 vs 3 map called Glacial Ravine and a 2 vs 2 map called Memorial Basin. The add-on will also four new achievements worth 100 points. details on those, along with details on the maps, can be found after the break:

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Halo 3 Mythic Map Pack Released

Fans looking for a bit more Halo 3 multiplayer action will be interested to know that the Halo 3 Mythic Map Pack is now available via Xbox Live Marketplace. The Mythic Map Pack features three new maps:

Assembly - set in a Covenant Scarab Tank factory.

Orbital - set in the abandoned Quito Space Tether docking station.

Sandbox - set in the ruins of a rundown temple buried in the desert sands.

You can add it to your download queue by visiting Xbox.com. It costs a mere 800 MS points, or right around $10 USD.

Halo Encyclopedia coming

For those who can’t get enough Halo information, DK Publishing has announced they are publishing the Halo Encyclopedia in 352 glorious full-color pages. The book is planned for a November 2009 release.

The press release at this point says the book will cover just the games. A call to the publisher has them scrambling to check if the books will be included as well, since the stories were sanctioned by Bungie and Microsoft. The forward of the encyclopedia will be written by Frank O’Connor, who left Bungie as content manager in May of last year to work at Microsoft and more closely with the Halo franchise.

We’ve had initial chats with DK to publish an excerpt or two of the encyclopedia as it gets closer to release, along with getting a few copies for a giveaway to our readers, so stay tuned.

Microsoft Sued for $90 Million Over Halo and Xbox LIVE

Apparently, in these hard economic times, one way some companies are trying to get by is by painting targets on other companies with much bigger wallets. And when you talk about companies with big wallets, well, you can’t find a much bigger target these days than Microsoft. Enter PalTalk Holdings, who is suing Microsoft to the tune of $90 million, claiming that MS has infringed on patents PalTalk bought from MPath Interactive. PalTalk claims the two patents in question were infringed upon by Microsoft in the creation of the Halo games and the Xbox LIVE service.

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Microsoft Announces Limited Edition Resident Evil 360

Y’know, it’s been a while since Microsoft has released limited edition 360 to the public. In fact, the last one was green and orange Halo edition 360 a couple of years back. Rumors started popping up a few weeks ago that Microsoft was looking at dishing out another limited 360 edition in honor of the upcoming release of Resident Evil 5. Today, Microsoft confirmed those rumors, detailing the new package.

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