Halo 3 Launch Campaign Begins

It appears that Halo 3 may be closer to fruition than many have feared: despite Bungie's refusal even to confirm that it is working on the next instalment of the blockbusting first-person shoot-em-up, stores in the US have begun displaying banners and furniture bearing the Halo 3 logo and the legends: "Coming 2006" and "Reserve yours today".
The news that US stores are taking pre-orders for Halo 3 will delight Xbox 360 owners hungry for blockbusting triple-A titles, and the game's release will undoubtedly drive sales of Microsoft's next-gen console, just as its predecessors shifted Xboxes. So it's tactically important for MS to get Halo 3 out as early as possible.

However pre-order campaigns often begin very early to lure you into parting with your lucre and they're no guarantee of a final release date at all. June the 1st has been bandied about as a launch date recently but US e-tailer GameStop, for example, have a provisional date of 03/10/06 (if we read those US date formats right) for Halo 3, but whether this is a true indication only time will tell.
Microsoft-owned developer Bungie has been uncharacteristically coy about Halo 3, but Bill Gates remarks suggesting that Halo 3 would launch concurrently against Sony's PlayStation 3 is about as close as anyone's got to naming an actual date.

For now, Xbox 360 owners will have to be content with playing Halo and Halo 2 for the original Xbox on their machines - the Xbox 360 can display both games in wide-screen at 720p resolution, with full-screen anti-aliasing. But with games like Gears of War also scheduled to arrive in 2006, things are looking rosy for Xbox 360-owning fps fans.