Hasta La Gadget!

We all know that a game changes very frequently during the development process – some features get fully implemented and make it to the finished product, while others are only partially developed and ultimately get left on the cutting room floor. It’s no different with Halo 4, and today we’re finding out that there were a couple particularly cool armor abilities 343 Industries had to do away with before shipping the game. They were discovered by the folks at TheHaloCouncil, who did a little bit of digging in Halo 4‘s code and filmed a video showing off these armor abilities that almost were.

Say hello to the Hacker and Teleport armor abilities, which you can see in action with the video posted below. Teleport is pretty self-explanatory, as it lets you jump a short distance almost instantly. As you can imagine, having an armor ability like that would be great for closing the gap quickly so you can get in and perform an assassination before the other player has a chance to react.

The Hacker ability is definitely the coolest of the two, as it allows you to disable the armor abilities of other players. See someone sneaking around with active camouflage on? Use the Hacker to disable their cloak and expose them to the world. The Hacker ability seems like it would go a long way in evening the odds against nearly every other armor ability out there, which might just be why we didn’t see it in the final game.

While the host of the video speculates that these armor abilities might be released in future Halo 4 DLC, a Microsoft representative told Kotaku that these are merely “legacy items” and the studio doesn’t have any plans to implement more armor abilities in the future. While that’s a bummer, it was nice to catch a glimpse of canned features despite the fact that we’ll probably never get to use them in regular gameplay.

Leftover Halo 4 features found lurking in game code is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Halo 4 may not have shared the success Call of Duty: Black Ops II has, especially when you consider the game is exclusive to the Xbox 360. But the series itself has had quite the run as Microsoft announced today 50m units of the entire Halo series have been sold.

Halo debuted on the Xbox back in 2001 and since then has received regular updates all the way to this year’s Halo 4, which earned $220 million in its first 24 hours. Before today’s announcement, the Halo series had sold a total of 46 million units, which leads us to assume Halo 4 has sold a total of 4 million units.

Halo’s popularity has earned an inevitable sequel from Halo 4′s developer, 343 Industries, which the team is currently working on its early development. Aside from the sequel, 343 Industries is currently debating whether or not to deliver a second season of Spartan Ops, which is a game mode that tells a completely different story from the campaign and encourages co-op play.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Archos GamePad Now Available , NVIDA GeForce Experience App Finds Near-Perfect Game Settings,

When it comes to Halo 4 DLC, we already know quite a bit. We know that Microsoft and 343 Industries are planning three separate map packs named Crimson, Majestic, and Castle. We also know that the companies are offering a War Games Map Pass for 2,000 MSP, which means that opting for the Map Pass will save you 15% over buying each map pack individually. What we didn’t know, however, is when these map packs would be releasing.

That may have just changed, as a new screenshot from the German Xbox 360 Dashboard apparently lists the release dates for all three map packs. Originally posted over at Halo Council, this screenshot says gives Crimson, Majestic, and Castle release dates of December 10, February 25, and April 1 respectively. If this is true, it means that the first Halo 4 map pack DLC is a mere two weeks away.

We wouldn’t be surprised at all if this is true, but the fact that Castle has a listed release date of April 1 makes this whole thing a little suspicious. April 1, as many of you know, is the worldwide day of pranks, so it’s possible that Microsoft and 343 Industries are having a little fun at the expense of players. In any case, with no official word from Microsoft, it’s hard to say with any certainty that this is legitimate.

If these dates are the real deal and Crimson’s release is really just two weeks away, then we should be getting confirmation from Microsoft and 343 any day now. While we’re hesitant to believe that these are the official release dates, it’s worth pointing out that Microsoft said the three map packs would be releasing in December, February, and April when they were all announced, so that lends some credibility to this rumor. Stay tuned.

[via Kotaku]

Halo 4 map pack release dates reportedly outed is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Stained glass seems to be having some sort of a geeky renaissance period. So why shouldn’t Halo get in on the colored translucent glass action? Well, okay then…

This impeccably detailed Master Chief stained glass window was made by Evan Daniels of Martian Glass Works. It’s just about perfect. The only thing it’s missing is a little glowing blue Cortana floating around and guiding Chief’s way as he takes on the Covenant and countless other nasties.

Measuring in at 50″(H) x 40″(W) and made up out of about 200 pieces of glass, it’s an impressive feat for sure. It took Evan about 70 hours to construct. Of course, all of that work is bound to be worth something, and the big glass Chief is selling for a whopping $3000(USD). But even if you can’t afford it, you should pop on over to Etsy and admire it from afar.

[via OTL Gaming Thanks, Josh!]

I don’t think it will come as a surprise to anyone out there that Halo 4 is already a major success. Microsoft has announced that the launch of the game is the biggest and most successful launch in the franchise’s history. In fact, the game brought in a whopping $220 million globally in the first 24 hours of availability.

Microsoft believes that the game is on track to gross more than $300 million in global sales the first week it’s available. The game earned more money on its opening day than the biggest opening day sales in U.S. box office history for a Hollywood blockbuster. That happened to be the movie Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. Halo 4 also earned more money on its opening day than The Avengers to put things in perspective.

Microsoft also offered a bit of insight into how much time players are spending with Halo 4. During the first five days it was available, over 4 million players played online. Those players spent a total of 31.4 million hours playing the game. Even more impressive is that Microsoft says the entire Halo franchise has racked up over 5 billion hours played since the series first debuted.

[via Major Nelson]