Amazon recently put up a listing for a brand new Xbox 360 Elite Bundle. Those who have yet to take the plunge into the current gen consoles should probably take advantage of this newly announced SKU, because it’s one hell of a deal. The bundle includes the Xbox 360 system, a 120GB hard drive, and 2 popular titles called Halo 3: ODST and Forza Motorsport 3. The bundle will run you about $300, but it’s well worth the price tag when you take a look at the games that come with it!

With Microsoft ceasing Xbox LIVE support for original Xbox titles on April 15, Bungie has made sure not to let dedicated players frown in dismay at the end of Halo 2 online play.

In fact, Microsoft wants you to play more Halo - through an invitation into the Halo: Reach beta. In addition to the beta invite, gamers can expect to be rewarded for longtime support of Xbox LIVE and Halo with a free three-month Gold subscription for Xbox LIVE as well as 400 MS points.

What exactly qualifies a person to be a loyal Halo player is still unknown.

I don’t know if this trailer is real or not, but if it is, I am soooo glad I bought Halo: ODST. The leaked footage comes to us from a Taiwanese video game website called GNN. The trailer purports to show the multiplayer portion of Halo: Reach in action and it looks crazy. Jet packs? Assassinations? You got to see this for yourself.

After what seems like forever after coming out, Bungie finally admits the sting of regret after excluding a matchmaking service for it’s Firefight mode in Halo 3: ODST because there wasn’t enough time to put it in (snicker, snicker). Bungie Community honcho, Brian Jarrard had this to say on the matter:

It’s finally happening. Microsoft will be shutting down Xbox LIVE for all of their original Xbox titles on April 15th. This announcement comes from Microsoft’s Marc Whitten on an official press release:

“On April 15 we will discontinue the Xbox LIVE service for original Xbox consoles and games, including Xbox v1 games playable on Xbox 360 and Xbox Originals. I want to start by saying this isn’t a decision we made lightly, but after careful consideration, it is clear this will provide the greatest benefit to the Xbox LIVE community.”

Marc seems to think this decision will help Xbox LIVE as a whole, I’m not sure how, but apparently it’s going to “provide the greatest benefit to the Xbox LIVE community.” We will see what M$ means by this in the coming months.

Major Nelson reported a few days ago on the top titles of 2009 on Xbox Live. His lists included the most played games of the year by connectivity, the most played Xbox Live Arcade titles as well as lists for top Windows games and Top original Xbox titles.

The notable call-outs include Halo 3 taking top honors as having the most unique users play the game over Live throughout the year. Following this, we have the latest three Call of Duty games and Gears of War 2. On the Arcade side of things, Battlefield 1943 and the still-awesome Castle Crashers took the number one and two spots respectively.

Check out the lists below.

The folks at Brave New Gamer picked up on some interesting information regarding Microsoft and the future of the Halo franchise. 28 new job listings were added to the Microsoft Interactive Entertainment Careers site, most of which were for positions at 343 Industries, the folks overseeing all Halo projects.

The jobs range from producers, artists to programmers and animators for work on Halo Waypoint to other positions for what’s described as a “new experience in the Halo universe.” With Halo: Reach coming out in the not-too-distant future, could we be seeing Halo 4? A Halo MMO?

The next issue of Game Informer is set to reveal Halo: Reach but a piece of artwork (seen above) from the magazine has leaked online earlier and the folks at CVG picked up on it.

The concept art depicts several customized characters out on the battlefied but says little of what new gameplay we’ll be treated to in the newest installment into Microsoft’s prized Halo franchise.

NPD Group has released the top software sales for 2009 through November. Even though Modern Warfare 2 only sold for one month it placed twice on the list with its 360 title taking top honors. Nintendo on the whole performed very well, claiming 4 of the top 5 spots and 6 spots overall on the list. It’s also important to note that 3 of Nintento’s titles listed in the top 5 were not released in 2009.

The 2009 Spike Video Game Awards are over with, and we’ve been covering a lot of announcement and trailer information coming out of the show, but in case you missed the actual awards themselves, we haven’t forgotten about you – we’ve put together the official list of 2009 VGA winners in each category (as well as the nominees).

Don’t forget to check out our own 2009 Game of the Year Round-Up for a more extensive discussion on the most critically acclaimed titles of the year.

Yesterday we got our first tease for the upcoming Bungie production of Halo: Reach with a cinematic trailer featured at the Spike TV Video Game Awards, and now we have word that our first chance to play the game will be coming very soon.

As all gamers know, the first quarter of 2010 is overloaded with Triple-A titles and while Halo: Reach isn’t scheduled to hit shelves until Fall of next year, the beta will be playable in the Spring.

In an interview with Gamasutra, Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg spoke about Halo Reach and his thoughts on the competition. He opened up by taking a few shots at Sony’s Gran Turismo 5, which I have to admit made me chuckle.

“Is it launching next year? I’ve seen years and years of minigames, but I haven’t seen that the game’s done. They just released the PSP version. Maybe that’s what they’ve been working on?”

He continued by voicing his opinion on Halo Reach.

“I feel confident that there’s nothing that will compare in size. Halo Reach will be the biggest game of 2010.”

Bungie has finally made a  home for Halo Reach content. For now, it is listed as a “projects page” and will be the temporary home for all the Halo Reach content and announcements.

This of course comes right before the Spike VGA event in which Bungie will be showing off Halo Reach’s gameplay for the first time. Here’s hoping that the footage shows the series going in a new exciting direction after it’s last somewhat stale entry (Halo 3 ODST). Be sure to tune into Spike this Saturday December 12 to catch the footage. If you happen to miss the event, come and visit us here at Game Rant for all the updates.

Given the economy, it’s hard for some gamers to get what they want – and with the prices of most games, who can blame them? That’s why, here at Game Rant, we thought we’d share a good Christmas bargain with you:

As Kotaku reported, Wal-Mart has announced that if you buy a $199 Nintendo Wii Bundle from their US stores next week, you’ll get a $50 Wal-Mart Gift Card for your patronage. Convenient, seeing as that about covers the cost of a new game for your new system! And just to tip you towards using the gift card on another game, Wal-Mart has also stepped up and knocked $10 off the prices of several top games until December 24th.

If you’re a gamer and a follower of industry news, you need to check out the Inside Gaming Awards, a huge new gaming awards show from Machinima.com.  If you watch trailers and previews online, then you’ve no doubt come across Machinima’s widely popular YouTube channel for which we’ve used ourselves here at Game Rant to share trailers with you.

Up until December 7th, voting will open for everyone for the Gamers’ Choice awards.  It’s a very unique and cool (if not first of its kind) voting mechanic: there is one video for each nominee, and each video view counts as a vote.  Each video contains clickable links to easily navigate around all the categories and nominees.

The awards will take place on December 11th 2009, the night before the Spike TV Video Game Awards, and offer another way for gamers to participate and celebrate a great year in gaming. Machinima’s new awards program is the first of its kind and we have the nominees for the awards listed below.

Spike announced today on the VGA 2009 website, the nominees for this year’s program. Voting is now open so be sure to stop by and vote for your favorite games! Something a little more interesting though is the announcement of the first of several world exclusive premieres for the VGAs; The first being the world exclusive premiere footage of Halo: Reach that will air on their annual award ceremony.

While the other world exclusive premieres have yet to be announced, this is certainly one of the biggest games they could have grabbed an exclusive from! As for all the nominees and categories, you can check them out below (thanks to 1up).

Halo has a huge cult following so of course Microsoft is going to market the name as much as possible. And that means a Halo feature film! Well, not exactly the live-action movie that was canned but we did hear about Halo: Legends when it was first announced back at Comic Con this summer. Upon that announcement, fans started going crazy.

Recently, Halo: Waypoint launched and it is set to start airing the Halo: Legends anime tomorrow. But with a recent press release it appears that Warner Home Video will be releasing the entire series of 7 episodes on DVD and Blu-ray. Finally, you can play Halo on your Playstation 3! You can check out the official press release brought to us by filmschoolrejects:

Sure we have had Halo 3: ODST to play with and the brand new Halo Waypoint which released today, but we are all still craving something on Halo: Reach. Thanks to someone on the MLG forums, we now have something.

These low-quality images from the game started popping all over the web and the news was brought forth by a Tom Morello (on mlgpro.com) that they were floating around.

These screens look like the real deal so I’m going to say Bungie is probably furious right now. Tom Morello, if you didn’t have a reason to go into hiding you do now. Check out the images after the jump.

If you already have read my preview coverage of Borderlands, the you know about the basics on controls, leveling and the health system.

Now, after dozens of hours logged into the game all I can say is that it’s excellent. This is exactly what I have been waiting on for a very long time. Borderlandsperfectly blends an action FPS with an action RPG. I can easily say it is one of the best games of 2009, and one of my personal favourites on the Xbox 360.

Check out Game Rant’s full review after the jump.

Halo Waypoint seems to be every Halo fan’s wet dream. It’s the one place on your Xbox 360 that compiles everything ever known about Halo and puts it in one place, and I mean everything. There are in-game clips posted by Bungie and players, Halo news, as well as screen shots from Firefight Mode and a portal that links every Halo achievement together (perfect for achievement whores).

One cool feature of Halo Waypoint will be the milestones. Milestones are little awards that unlock after a certain amount of achievements have been unlocked in all three of the current Halos on Xbox 360 (i.e. Halo Wars, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST). There are a total of 40 milestones in Halo Waypoint, each one levels your profile up, so 40 milestones equals….. 40 levels! (I needed help from my 10 year old brother for that one). There are a total of 3950 achievement points that can be unlocked with all three games and DLC, but you will only have to unlock roughly 60% of those to reach level 40.

Welcome to Part One of Game Rant’s Preview/Review of Borderlands which hits shelves tomorrow. I’ve been playing this a ton recently and here’s my impressions of the games from the first few hours of play. Check back soon for Part Two soon for a complete review of the title.

The game opens up with a little story about a vault that treasure hunters have sought out to find for years. It is rumored to contain riches, alien technology and gorgeous women. That’s all I’ve ever wanted out of a vault, hell I would search for it as well. The problem is the vault is located in Pandora, a vast wasteland full of creatures, bandits and mutants wanting to kill anything in site.

The opening credits introduce the character classes you will get to choose from. The credits are done with a very cinematic quality and very enjoyable while they last. Right away, I fell in love with the cell-shaded graphical art style which looks fantastic. The characters are on a rundown bus on their way to Fyrestone depot. They are treasure hunters and are in search of the loaded vault. If you play through the single player campaign, you have to choose one of the four character classes available.

The rookie is looking quite bad ass today

Well it’s official: Halo 3: ODST has sold 2.5 million units as USA Today reported in an article about the future of the franchise. 2.5 million copies sold rakes in roughly $125 million for Bungie and Microsoft. However, ODST seems to be trailing behind Halo 3, a game that brought in $170 million on its first day! Anything Bungie seems to touch turns to gold and this is no surprise at all that its latest game has done so well (a standalone expansion, no less).

There are many reasons why it could have sold so well. Not only do you get a brand new hero and campaign with ODST, but you also receive every multiplayer map for Halo 3 in existence. That my friends, is an unreal deal (if you didn’t already fork over your money for all of the maps that is).

Halo Recon was announced at TGS in 2008 as a small expansion to the fan-favorite Halo 3. The game was stated to have a new campaign that would run roughly four to six hours. For the first time in the series, the playable hero of the campaign would not be Master Chief, but a new protagonist in ODST (Orbital Drop Shock Troopers) armor.  It was also said to have an expanded multiplayer with exclusive new maps, and all of this content was supposed to release at a discounted price.

Over a year, the game went through a name change from Recon to ODST, a price increase, and the additionof a new cooperative multiplayer game mode called Firefight, which was said to be similar to the Gears of War 2 Horde mode (one of the most incredible experiences available on the 360). The question now is whether or not this expansion is really worth the full retail price tag.

Killzone 2, one of few major exclusives that Playstation 3 still holds, as sold 1.9 million copies since its release in February.

Halo 3: ODST, sold 2 million copies in a day…

For those involved in the ever-lasting debates or “console wars,” there’s not much defending that fact. Was it the brand name, the sheer number of X-Box 360s sold vs. Playstation 3 units, or was it the fact that Killzone 2 was missing one majorly important feature…