Fans of the Halo Franchise got a treat this E3 when Microsoft and 343 Industries revealed Halo CE: Anniversary Edition an HD remake of the classic Xbox title.   Microsoft has since then revealed details on the goodies you will get if you pre-order the game.

Pre-Order’s will come with the following extras:

• Master Chief Avatar Armour: Heroes Never Die, and to honour the 10th anniversary of John 117, you will finally be able to transform your Xbox Live Avatar into the iconic hero by outfitting it with Master Chief’s signature MJOLNIR Powered Assault Armour.
• Grunt Funeral Skull: An exclusive, game-modifying skull that changes the rules of the game for an explosively humorous experience, Grunt Funeral sends Halo’s most lowly and lovable enemy out in a blaze of glory. And plasma. And then more glory. Once the skull has been activated, every Grunt’s methane tank will explode like a plasma grenade when killed. Watch out for the Grunt chain reaction!

343 Industries also released a new trailer that details the effects of the “Grunt Funeral Skull” which you can view after the jump.

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HD remakes seem to be the thing to do in the game industry these days. It is a low risk venture with almost always much to gain. Some of the biggest franchises of all time have hopped on the HD bandwagon, Metal Gear Solid, God of War, and Resident Evil, just to name a few. But Final Fantasies not ending in 13, have yet to be given that HD treatment. The wait could be over soon.

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Take a look at all the games hitting store shelves tomorrow after the jump, anything that interests you?

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Kinect was released and became a family favorite but the opinion of most core gamers is that the device is useless to them. If you’re in that camp, get ready to… not change your view. Microsoft is promoting their NUads integration into the Kinect dashboard experience. Huh?

Microsoft is hoping to get the program running by 2012 and use it to give voice recognition to ads. When you see a ad, “Xbox More” will be the option you get to obtain further information about an ad. “Xbox Near Me” give you the ability to track a retailer that sells a particular product near you. Finally, “Xbox Tweet” ads the function to Tweet about the ad you were looking at. I’m sure that will either go unused or call for a lot of unfollows.

So far it’s not known if advertisers are sold on the idea but if it is, you’ll definitely see them next spring. I’ll leave the “Xbox (Insert line here)” jokes to you.

Gears of War fans rejoice! A limited edition console featuring one of Microsoft’s biggest franchises is coming to stores this September during the launch of the game. The system will come with a 320GB hard drive and a sweet crimson design with Gears of War logos on top and front. This limited edition console will retail for $399.99 and here is what you will get for that 400 bucks.
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When Sony took the hit a while back, people were quick to judge their security. Now we’ve seen many more companies fall victim to hackers whether it was Eidos, Nintendo, Sega, or the Minecraft or EVE Online users. According to reports Xbox Live users among some Paypal, World of Warcraft, other service users have been added to that long list.

LulzSec, who have recently attacked Nintendo and even the CIA’s website, has released thousands of emails and passwords a lot of which are Xbox Live related data. While the service itself is not down just as PSN was, any user of Live could have been among  that data. That data was posted to many file sharing services and taken down which prompted for re-uploads with the links posted to their Twitter account. According to the Twitter feed, it is still up on their site and still accessible.

While it’s not a direct attack on the service, even random user information leaks is still cause for alarm.  It should go without saying that everyone should change their information and passwords to be safe.

It’s seems like hacking attacks are coming into style this year and that sucks because we’re all pretty infuriated about  how these hackers have gotten their dirty little paws on our data over and over. Let’s hope that this trend will finally stop soon. As of this post, I’ve seen no official word from Microsoft regarding the data. Please don’t pull a Sony….

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