The upcoming Halo sequel will be featured on the Conan O Brien show, and Major Nelson has already Tweeted to inform everyone that news is coming on the game within the next 24 hours.

Officially, the game has only been given a Holiday 2012 release date, but The Verge are claiming to have inside sources at Microsoft, who have told them that the game will release on November 6. A confirmation of this is expected to come before 12pm tomorrow Eastern Time.

We would be surprised if this information is accurate, not the date itself but the timing of the reveal, as we would have thought that an announcement at E3 2012 would be more suited. Still though, any Halo 4 news is good news in our books and the sooner a date is made the sooner fans can start getting excited about the next gameplay reveal.

If the timing rumor is spot on though, that means we actually only have a few more hours to wait until we find out if the release date is real or not. November 6 falls on a Tuesday just to let you know and judging by the pedigree of the game, we’re guessing that this relates to a global release as well, so those in Europe won’t have to wait until the Friday.

What are your thoughts on these surprise Halo 4 release rumors, did you expect the date to be unveiled at E3 2012 as well? Let’s see what happens. Don’t forget you can check out the new look Master Chief here.

UPDATE: It’s confirmed that Halo 4 will be released on November 6.

More About: 343 Industries, Halo 4, microsoft

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We’re pretty surprised by this decision as well. Given that this is the first Halo game without famed developers Bungie, you would presume that there’s a lot of pressure on the shoulders on 343 Industries to deliver a game with the same caliber of the previous games in the franchise, especially since Halo 4 will see the glorious return of Master Chief.

As most of you know, there was beta testing for the last two Halo games, but 343 Industries has already confirmed that they will not be following on with the trend for Halo 4. It now means of course that they run the risk of releasing a game that may come littered with bugs, bugs which could have been spotted by the community with the use of beta testing.

Obviously there isn’t an argument yet since the game is nowhere near completion, but we wouldn’t like to be in the shoes of 343 Industries if they release the game and then weeks after face a barrage of criticism over bugs and glitches because they didn’t put the effort in to bring out a beta.

On a side note, you may want to pay attention to the wave of fake Halo 4 beta websites that are in circulation at the moment which claim to offer free codes into the said beta. Now that 343 Industries has made the news official, we should now see a reduction in these sort of websites appearing, but we’d hate to imagine the number of Xbox 360 users that have already been duped.

What are your thoughts on the lack of beta for Halo 4 – are you surprised by this decision from 343 Industries? Halo 4 releases during the Holiday season this year.

More About: 343 Industries, Halo 4

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The first look video has been embedded at the bottom of this post, it lasts over 4 minutes and we get to see lots of glimpses of what 343 Industries plan to bring to the game, one thing which is reaffirmed is Master Chief’s new armor – something which we spoke about in detail in this article. We have added an image below which shows Master Chief’s armor in Halo 3 alongside the new armor in Halo 4 below.

343 say that in Halo 4 they want it to feel like you’re controlling a heavy, powerful, yet athletic super hero when you’re controlling Master Chief, there’s a brief mention of new gameplay being added – however no further details were disclosed. Something else we get to see is the new HUD (heads up display), you can see a screenshot showing this below, 343 say that it’s quite similar to a fighter jet HUD, do you like the new look?

Some other things which get a mention in the video include a teaser toward’s the plot, there are no specifics, but we are told that the campaign will entail Master Chief fighting for something important against a bigger threat than ever before. At times in the video we get to see the use of facial tracking technologies which suggests that cinematic sections in the campaign will feel more immersive thanks to accurate expressions, this combined with more detailed visuals than ever before should combine nicely.

The video also reveals that all weapons, vehicles and enemies have been graphically overhauled and we can confirm that you’ll have the familiar Battle Rifle at your disposal with its precision sight and burst fire – you can see the new-look design below.

There are still a few more things to tell you, if you thought that Halo 3′s sounds weren’t quite making the most of your audio equipment we can confirm that the sounds of guns etc should be great in Halo 4 thanks to an all-new audio team who are hard at working capturing the all new sound effects. But that’s not all, we also know that 100 tracks have already been recorded by the orchestra.

It’s not just sound which is completely new, the multiplayer maps in this game are said to be built from scratch as well, so you won’t just see segments of terrain and building from previous Halo games “cut and pasted” into Halo 4, instead you are seeing completely new designs which take competitiveness very seriously. In the first look video we get to see two of these fresh new maps, one of which is called Warhouse and the other is called Wraparound. Warhouse is pretty intriguing, it’s basically an abandoned military base which surrounds a giant mech which is being built, as for Wraparound we don’t know a great deal, but 343′s Lead Designer (Brad Welch), tells us that it is a looping arena with lots of verticality.

That’s about all we can tell you about what’s revealed in the Halo 4 first-look video, however we must just point out that everything which we’ve told you is “subject to change” (343′s words not ours). Check out the video below and tell us if you spotted something which we missed.

Are you impressed by what you’ve seen? Do you think 343 Industries will deliver a better Halo game than what Bungie ever released?

More About: 343 Industries, halo, Halo 4

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Apparently Halo Anniversary will allow you to download its maps to your hard drive, which means that if you have the Reach disc in the drive you will be able to play Anniversary’s maps, not only this but people who play Reach but do not buy Anniversary will be able to buy Anniversary’s maps as DLC, which got us thinking about the Call of Duty franchise.

With new Call of Duty games arriving each year and at least 3 map packs hitting each game a lot of maps come and go, wouldn’t it be great if Call of Duty games which use the same engine offered this functionality? The big problem at the moment is the fact that there is not just one game developer working on Call of Duty titles, in terms of current-gen consoles Treyarch has developed Call of Duty 5 & 7 (World at War & Black Ops), whilst Infinity Ward has been behind Call of Duty 4 & 6 (Modern Warfare & Modern Warfare 2).

We think it would be great if from this point on developers gave their Call of Duty games a similar feature to Halo: Anniversary, for example with Modern Warfare 3 (CoD 8 ) being developed by Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games perhaps the game’s maps could be locally downloadable – meaning that if and when Modern Warfare 4 arrives you can play multiplayer game modes on your MW3 maps. Likewise if Treyarch is working on Black Ops 2 and plan to release Black Ops 3 the BO2 maps could be playable on BO3.

In theory this is a great idea, however there are some difficulties to overcome, firstly and most obviously games move on, for example on Modern Warfare (CoD 4) there were different weapons, perks and killstreaks to MW3 (CoD 6) – surely gamers need “a level playing field” to ensure games are balanced? Secondly graphics are always improving, which means old maps would look inferior to the shiny new maps which future titles will bring.

Previously Infinity Ward and Treyarch have both made money from revamping their old maps, which means that they could lose a source of income by making maps playable across different CoD games, obviously consumers want this but money makes the world go round.

Do you think Call of Duty developers will / should allow this functionality? Let us know in the comments section below…

More About: 343 Industries, call of duty, halo, infinity ward, Treyarch

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Not only did Phil Spencer say this but he also said “It’s not Halo-anything, it’s Halo 4. It’s the beginning of a new trilogy”, if we take this statement literally it would be fair to presume that 343 Industries will be developing three Halo games, we presume these will be called Halo 4, Halo 5 and Halo 6. Up until today we had no idea that another Halo trilogy was coming.

Other statement from Spencer suggest that Halo 4′s campaign will be immersive and story driven, as we stated in the opening paragraph Master Chief will be featured in this game, we are led to believe that that the game’s campaign will evolve around him. Spencer also goes on to say that when it comes to Halo 4 “It’s not about re-enacting previous wars, it’s not the kind of comic-book pulp that Gears of War”.

As you can see Phil Spencer only really talks about the game’s campaign and doesn’t once mention multiplayer aspects of the game, does this mean that Microsoft Game Studios are happy with online game modes? We are not sure, however many think that when it comes to downloadable content Reach was a little disappointing. So far just two map packs have been released (the Noble Map Pack and the Defiant Map Pack), this isn’t a lot considering the game first arrived back in September 2010 and is nothing compared to the frequent DLC releases we see for Call of Duty games.

Back in September 20101 when Reach arrived we heard very few criticisms of the game’s campaign, in fact reviews were great and if you check out metacritic you will see that 99 critics scored the game very highly which has resulted in a metascore of 91/100 which makes you wonder why Phil Spencer talks about this game and Halo: ODST as if they were failures.

We would love to hear feedback from Halo fans, therefore feel free to answer the following questions in the comments section below. Do you think Halo has lost its way? What do you think needs to change when it comes to Halo 4? Do you think the Halo: Reach campaign was lackluster? Do you think big changes need to be made to the game’s multiplayer aspects?

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If you check out GameBlurb’s article you can see tons of leaked information regarding the next installment in the Halo video game series, all of which was originally posted on the Bungie.net forums, we won’t post any of the major spoilers here, but we will highlight some information which will be welcomed by many.

The spoilers talk in detail about the game’s setting and story line, things we don’t mind telling you about mainly consist of weapon, vehicle and maps information, but please remember we do not know how reliable the source of this information really is.

Apparently Halo 4 will feature fan favorite weapons and vehicles, there will be new vehicles to along with new weapons. Apparently weapons will feature an “unprecedented level of customization”, this sounds exciting to us as it seems to build for where Bungie left off with Halo: Reach. Other details suggest that Halo 4 will push the action genre boundaries and will feature huge maps which span land, sea and space.

Remember if you don’t mind reading spoilers check out the link to GameBlurb which can be found in this post’s second paragraph, the 500+ words of info which we read sounded pretty legitimate to us, what do you think?

More About: 343 Industries, bungie, halo, Halo 4

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Instead the series will continue with new developer 343 Industries, with Microsoft Studios once again resuming publishing duties. The intial leak definitely took the element of surprise out of Microsoft’s announcement at E3, but the accompanying trailer showing Master Chief definitely still gave us the ‘wow’ factor.

The trailer shows Master Chief appearing from the same ship that featured at the end of Halo 3, making his way on this ship to another planet. The game isn’t being developed by Bungie as we mentioned above, but we have to say that the visuals are looking very impressive from 343 Industries. We can’t wait to see another teaser.

As for release, the end of the trailer confirms that Halo 4 will be out sometime during Holiday 2012. We’re guessing that Microsoft are now going to remain quite hush hush on the title, but we’re hoping that another reveal of some sort is planned for the Tokyo Game Show in September.

Watch the first trailer for the game and below and give us your immediate reaction to Halo 4. Are you impressed?

More About: 343 Industries, Halo 4, microsoft

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As reported from VG247, the information has surfaced from an upcoming edition of magazine GamesMaster, as details reveal that 343 Industries will be the team to make the remake a reality.

It is also worth pointing out, that if the rumors are true, it means that the HD remake of Halo 1 would coincide with the tenth anniversary of the original game, launched on the Xbox back in 2002 – coincidence or not guys?

The question is though, would you welcome a remake? The most obvious answer is yes, but we’ve created a poll below anyway for you to have your say on this.

[poll id="289"]

More About: 343 Industries, Halo Remake, Halo: Combat Evolved

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