Dallas, Texas. In a major surprise to pundits and journalists, former President George W. Bush announced today that, after his current tour as a motivational speaker, he will be competing professionally on the Major League Gaming circuit.

Fatal1ty posted a video of his recent trip to the new Video Games Hall of Fame and Museum launched by Twin Galaxies

Never a Halo movie? Charlie Jane Anders says:

“We’re totally calling it: the Halo movie is never happening.

Almost two years after Halo 3’s release, the stigma associated with having the “bars of shame” is now gone.

Halo 3 employs a ranking system according to which a player proceeds private to private grade 2 to corporal to corporal grade 2 to sergeant, etc. Players may skip the intermediate grades, according to a complex algorithm developed by Bungie, the maker of Halo 3. A player earns what was formerly known as “the bars of shame” when the player’s skill has apparently plateaued. A player can still get rank up, however, even with the gold bars, but this is rather difficult to do.

Bungie says: Double the EXP and a chance to win Halo: Recon. Mythic Brawl is up for this weekend’s Double EXP Playlist and we want proof that you participated. Fire it up and get your Free For All on, then fill up your File Share with the evidence.

Just in case you are not tired of hearing the Halo music, a company is releasing the soundtrack to the Halo trilogy. I don’t know about you, but I could do without the song that accompanies the main menu.

Bungie has unvelied the map previously known as “Purple Reign.” It’s now called Assembly. Unfortunately they won’t/can’t say anything about how or when it will be released. Here are some screens of it though:

Here is some interesting, and disturbing, info from MTV.com:

Earlier this month, a hacker bragged that he’d gained access to the Xbox Live identity — or gamertag, as it’s known — of “Halo 3″ multiplayer producer Joe Tung. This allowed him access to Tung’s account and personal information. Tung isn’t alone.

From Shacknews:
Bungie recently shot down its own rumors that bots–artificial intelligence opponents–would be added to its hit Xbox 360 shooter Halo 3. The studio behind Halo had created the bot buzz in a video acceptance speech for an EDGE Magazine award.
In denying the rumors, community manager Luke Smith blasted select members of Bungie’s famously devout [...]

So Kotaku reports the following:

Let’s review: Back in February, Gearbox Software honcho Randy Pitchford
put up a job listing for senior artist, adding: “I’ve started a new
project. It’s big. It’s, like,
look-at-our-line-up-and-imagine-something-even-bigger kind of big. I’m
Directing it myself. I can’t mention it publicly yet. When you find out
what this is, you’ll likely agree that I can’t oversell this one.”