The Halo series, as ever, has been causing quite a storm recently. There have been wild emails circulating about mysterious goings-on, but they have now been solved, or at least we think so. Plus, Blacksite: Area 51 developer Midway are confident that Halo 3 will help Blacksite sell, and we have news about a Halo 2 competition currently ongoing. Hit the jump for all the gossip.

Firstly, Blacksite. Releasing a FPS shooter in September automatically screams Halo. Not to Midway though. They are releasing their same genre-based game in the same month as Halo 3. Do people need the two, when Halo covers so many bases for fans, which is all they will play for four weeks until GTA IV hits? Lead campaign designer Ricardo Bare told CVG:

“We’ve talked about this a lot and there’s a couple of different schools of thought. Whenever you go and see a really bad ass action movie like X-Men, it just makes you want to go and see Spider-Man 3, right? You usually want more of the same. Some people subscribe to the fact that when something really huge comes out, it helps the other two or three really good games that also come out, because you want more FPS action. At the same time, I think our game is different from Halo, so it’s not like we’re offering the same thing, we’re offering a really cool, gritty atmosphere and the squad - Halo 3 doesn’t have a squad.”

The difference between movies and games though is that games are considerably more expensive than a cinema ticket. Spending more on cinema tickets to see a similar film is easier than spending $180 on two other games similar to the one you already have. Nice analogy, but really it’s bullshit. September is far too crowded, and Blacksite runs the risk of being forgotten in a sea of hits, particularly that big wave that is Halo 3.

Moving on, that Beta which so many people loved attracted quite a few players. The official statistics were released, and it turns out that 820,000 unique Gamertags were logged, participating in more than 12 million hours of online play. Amusingly, that works out as 1,400 years solid play by any one person. 350 terabytes of information was transferred during that time too. Holy moly, that’s a lot of data, and a lot of hours. Just how much did you contribute?

Next. Viral Marketing played a big part in the build up to the release of Halo 2, with ilovebees.com being a hacker’s haven for a good while. Now we have a whole load of new stuff appearing. MS have sent wide-spread emails (here) to random people, claiming that “the time is nearly upon us”, amongst other things. People worked round the clock to figure out what the hell was going on, until it was discovered via loads of different methods that there is a countdown going (you can read everything that went on here). The countdown suggests that new content of some description will be revealed in 4 days and 30 hours (?!), at the time of writing. It’s all very strange, no-one really knows outside of Bungie, and so everyone needs to be patient.

In the mean time, there’s a competition running, using Halo 2 as the game of choice. The two new maps are now available for the game ($4) that you can download, but the chance to win an Elite 360 is surely more appealing. There is a sweep stake as well as a Tournament.

Halo 2 Challenge Tournament

First, compete in the Online Tournament from June 11 through July 25, 2007. After a 15-day leaderboard qualification round, the top 64 ranked players on the “H2 Challenge” Rumble Pit playlist will advance to the live bracket round. Matches during the tournament will be played on the new maps, so get them now and practice.

All the details can be found on Xbox.com, explaining all the rules and whatnot. Make sure you check them out before participating; you may not be eligible.

That’s just about it for all things Halo this week. Keep your eye out for more cryptic crap messages over the weekend, as there are sure to be more. Also let us know if you’re planning to win an Elite system.

Thanks to HylianHitman for submitting one piece of information about the mysterious email.