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Halo 2 breaks records with 1.5 million preorders

Anticipation for Bungie's latest promises one of the biggest entertainment launches ever

Microsoft has announced that pre-orders for Xbox-exclusive title Halo 2 have passed 1.5 million in the United States alone, breaking videogame records and guaranteeing first-day revenues higher than any movie in history.

Over 6,500 stores in the USA are planning to open at 12.01 AM on the morning of Tuesday, November 9th, to sell copies of the game, with the first retail copy set to be distributed at midnight in the Toys 'R' Us store in New York's Times Square.

Additionally, 1,125 further retailers worldwide are planning celebration events for the launch of the game - which will take place between November 9th and November 11th in every Xbox territory, covering 27 countries with seven different language versions.

Anticipation for the sequel to the biggest-selling Xbox game ever doesn't appear to have been dulled by the release of a pirate version onto the Internet last week - a move which has mainly been greeted with outrage by fans of the game.

"Halo 2 is expected to be the biggest 24 hours for a video game title in retail history," boasted Microsoft's VP of worldwide publishing and marketing for Xbox, Peter Moore, in a statement this week, "and is projected to bring in more revenue than any day one box office blockbuster movie in the United States."

The original Halo, which was also Xbox-exclusive originally but was later released on PC and Mac platforms, has now sold over five million units worldwide and is still a regular entry in the monthly top ten sales charts in North America.

Rob Fahey

Technology Light & Heavy

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Nanokiwi Best of 2004 :: Health

15 Minute Yoga Box
my highest recommendation
after two decades of nightly back pain
nothing I've done has been as lifechanging
as these simple yoga stretches
some kind of miracle. .

superman is dead

its worse than we feared. . .

Animals

I think I could turn and live with animals,
they are so placid and self-contained.
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God.

Not one is dissatisfied,
not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another,
nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago.

Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.

- Walt Whitman

Xbox2 Preview: Monster Machine

The release of Xbox2 in about a year looks to be a significant event in the history of computing. The first Xbox, though impressive, was very much a console version of current PC technology. Xbox2, codename Xenon, will push computing power to levels not seen outside supercomputing facilities.

The PC world has seen clock speeds hover at the 3ghz mark for a few years now, with heat problems apparent at higher speeds. This would have been part of the motivation for Microsoft's shock switch to IBM and its Power processor architecture (as used by Apple, most recently in the G5 iMac).

The Xenon will feature three(!) Power5 processors and running at a total of over 10ghz. This will be combined with ATI's latest R500 chip, which they claim will be ready to ship Q1 2005. So late 2005 looks a cert for the next Xbox.

What will this mean for gaming? The first xbox got rid of the jaggies and allowed the best gaming ever. Halo2 anyone? The next will see something approaching a photorealistic look. Though the latest software tools make game programming easier, its going to be quite a challenge for game companies to "direct" games which more and more resemble the cinema.

But if Xbox2 is the most exciting product of 2005, Sony looks to steal the show in 2006, with the much anticipated cell processor. Cell architecture is completely new and if the hype is to be believed will make the fastest PCs of today look like pockets calculators (again).

And behind it all: IBM

Essential Links:
Xbox2 Inside & Out
Xbox2 Specs

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