Halo: Combat Evolved News

Nearly five years on, Microsoft has finally gotten its Halo TV series greenlit and into production.

Halo and Destiny developer Bungie must pay $95,019 (around £56k) to former composer Marty O'Donnell, a US court has decided.

UPDATE 16/5/14 8.30am Bungie has released its patch notes for the upcoming Halo PC and Custom Edition update, which will move the soon-to-be-shutdown GameSpy services to a non-GameSpy server.

An added bonus will be CD key authentication support - to allow griefers to be banned effectively.

The developer has taken the opportunity to also include a range of bug-fixes in the update. Bungie's full patch notes lie below.

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PC online multiplayer service GameRanger is battling to keep multiplayer alive in a number of games affected by the upcoming GameSpy server shutdown.

The speed running world record for completing the original Halo on its hardest difficult, Legendary, has just been set by 26-year old Canadian Andrew "goatrope" Halabourda who wrapped up the game in a tidy 1:38:57.

Veteran Bungie developer Joe Staten has announced his departure from the company.

Sci-fi author and former writer and story consultant for Microsoft Game Studios, Eric Nylund, has joined up with Amazon Game Studios as its new director of narrative design.

In the days of yore i.e. circa 1999, the Marathon devs at Bungie were working on a game codenamed "Project Phoenix," before the studio was acquired by Microsoft and shifted all its efforts toward Halo, leaving the abandoned Phoenix unable to rise from the ashes.

Oopsy daisy! With just over two hours to go until its E3 press conference, Microsoft has – apparently by mistake - published a series of major announcements on Xbox.com – including news that "Halo 4 is on the way".

The information, images of which can be seen below, has since been removed, but in addition to Halo, Dance Central 2, Kinect Sports Season 2 and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary were all outed. Surprise!

Xbox.com described Halo 4 as "the news millions of Halo fans have waited for", while the long-awaited Halo HD remake is described as: "The epic game that launched a universe, remastered for a new generation".

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At least 10 non-sequel Kinect games will be announced at trade show E3 next month, Eurogamer can reveal.

For millions of Halo fans the series' iconic monk chant introduction music is instantly recognisable – but it almost didn't happen.

Microsoft's Halo studio 343 Industries is remaking Halo: Combat Evolved using the Halo: Reach engine, Games Master magazine claims.

A former Bungie developer has claimed that Apple was on the verge of buying the Halo developer just before Microsoft did back in the late nineties.

Around 2.5 million people have snapped up Halo 3: ODST in the two weeks since it was released.

That's according to USA Today, which also reports the expansion pack has generated over $125 million in sales and brought the total number of Halo games sold to 27 million.

But what about the rest of the Halo franchise? Any sign of that movie? "We're being very careful to pick the right time and the right partner," said creative director Frank O'Connor. No, then.

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Steven Spielberg is in negotiations to develop a Halo movie, according to a report by IESB.

Microsoft has said Peter Jackson's Halo project isn't in the bin after all - it's just "on hold".

Peter Jackson has confirmed the Halo project he first announced nearly three years ago is in the bin.

Good news, Halo buffs - Microsoft is launching a new "destination" on Xbox Live especially for you.

Microsoft is working on a series of seven short anime films titled Halo Legends.

Microsoft has coughed up an undisclosed amount of money to tech firm PalTalk, settling a lawsuit over the Halo games.

Sumthing Else Music Works and Microsoft have decided stuff all of the Halo music onto a massive compilation soundtrack.

Speculation is mounting that the new trailer for Bungie's next Halo project features a reference to missing five year-old Madeleine McCann.

The trailer, released yesterday, has since been the subject of widespread analysis on the internet, as reported by Videogaming247.

Apparently the message "MADDIE, WHERE ARE YOU?" appears in three frames of the video. A debate has now kicked off over whether this is a reference to the missing girl, who disappeared in May 2007.

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Bungie has finally scrapped CD checking in old-timer Halo 1 for PC, feeling five years of spinning may have ruined your discs.

More than three months after the first job ad appeared, Microsoft is still seeking a creative director for a new Halo project.

The next big step for artificial intelligence in games will be making a character walk up to a table and pick up a pencil.

Film maker Peter Jackson says that preliminary work and script doctoring on the Halo film he's executive-producing is going well, and he's got nothing but admiration for young director Neill Blomkamp, despite his relative lack of feature experience.

Newly announced Halo film director Neill Blomkamp has spoken out about how he's approaching the film's coveted source material, and about his views on Halo in general.

Halo will hit the silver screen in summer 2008, not 2007, Microsoft announced this week - and relative unknown Neill Blomkamp will direct.

At the Comic-Con held in San Diego last week, Marvel and Bungie announced plans to launch a new monthly comic titled Halo Ongoing.

As you might have guessed, it'll be based around the hit Xbox shooter, but that's all there is to report so far - there's no word on the comic's plotline, or on which artists and writers have been signed up to produce it.

Halo Ongoing is set to appear in shops later this year, following the release of the Halo Graphic Novel. As previously announced, the 128-page book will go on sale in the US this July, and its storyline will focus on the battles between the Covenant and the Flood.

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Anyone looking forward to the Halo graphic novel might like to head over to Marvel.com right now.

That's because you can now enjoy a preview of the graphic novel - or "comic", as they used to be called in our day - online. You have to register for the site, but it's free and doesn't take too long.

As reported back in March, the Halo comic will weigh in at 128 pages and is set to feature a host of characters and weapons familiar to fans. It's being worked on by French comic book artist Moebius, along with the likes of Phil Hale, Ed Lee, Tsutomo Nihei and Jay Faerber, plus Bungie's own art team.

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Halo may never appear in 2d officially, but in its absence some enterprising Frenchmen have come up with a freebie version instead. Based on the Halo novel The Fall of Reach, Halo Zero is a 21MB download.

Guillermo del Toro has confirmed that he's in talks with various parties including executive producer Peter Jackson about directing the Halo film, but that he'd ideally like to do a Hellboy sequel first.

Peter Jackson's revealed his lofty ambition as executive producer of the new Halo film, which begins shooting next year. "Hopefully it won't suck," he told film site Dark Horizons during a recent New York interview.

Microsoft has revealed that Lord of the Rings and King Kong director Peter Jackson and his partner Fran Walsh will be acting as executive producers on the Halo film.

The film translation of Microsoft's somewhat-popular sci-fi based first-person shooter franchise Halo has been given an official 2007 launch target by Universal and 20th Century Fox, according to a report in entertainment publication Variety.