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Halo 2 'X-Pack' demystified?

US retailer spills beans then quickly gathers them up, but not before the ketchup goes everywhere.

Fans of Halo 2 could have a multiplayer expansion pack to look forward to this May. After appearing on and then disappearing from Microsoft's Korean Xbox website last week, the Halo 2 X-Pack seems to have been demystified by another errant webmaster - this time on EBGames.com.

Yesterday, it seems, the US e-tailer featured a listing for the game pricing it at $19.99 with a 24th May release date. Visitors to the site were told to expect a collection of nine multiplayer maps as well as video content (both cinematic and documentary). The multiplayer elements on the disc would be available over Xbox Live as well as via System Link and split-screen.

However the listing did not detail any single-player improvements - bad news for Halo 2 fans disappointed by the campaign mode's brevity and abrupt conclusion - and later disappeared. Neither Microsoft nor Bungie have confirmed or denied it, but Bungie did state in response to the Korean X-Pack listing that it was aiming to make "a major announcement" this week - now believed to be scheduled for Good Friday.

That will presumably be the pack detailed above. Although there's a chance it's not what it seems, the listing description ties in with what we've heard about Bungie's future plans, with the developer noting in its statement that the "entire plan is designed to make new content available for everybody, those with Xbox Live and those without Xbox Live".