Xbox.com states that Bungie have split from Microsoft.

Microsoft Corp. today announced a plan for Bungie Studios, the developers of the Halo franchise, to embark on a path to become an independent company. Microsoft will retain an equity interest in Bungie at the same time continuing its long standing publishing agreement between Microsoft Game Studios and Bungie for the Microsoft owned Halo intellectual property as well as other future properties developed by Bungie.

Evidently Microsoft will still be taking an interest in the Halo franchise, however with Bungie now an independant studio, we may see some new games from the creators of Halo.

Major Nelson has announced on his blog that Halo 3 has now gone gold. This means that it is now ready to ship for it's release date in less than a month's time. I just hope they make enough copies.

Kotaku are reporting that the PC version of BioShock, the new FPS from 2k Games, can only be installted twice - ever. The game uses SecuROM technology, which verifies the installation of the game remotely, and once the game has been installed twice, it cannot be installed, on any PC, again. So if you get a new PC, and reinstall BioShock, thats it, if you ever need to reinstall it, you can't. 2K Games have said that "it will not affect normal gameplay."

msnbc reports that Halo 3 has broken the record for North American pre-orders. Microsoft announced today that Halo 3 has sold 1 million pre-order copies in North America, which breaks the record in the video game industry.

The American Private Equity Group, The Carlyle Group have placed a bid for British ISP, TV Provider, Phone Provider and Mobile Provider, Virgin Media, owned by Virgin after it's acquisition of NTL and Telewest last year. The bid for $11.5bn (£5.6bn) was placed on Monday, and Virgin say they are"considering it as part of a review of the business". If accepted, it would become the second largest takeover of a UK company by a Private Equity group since Boots was bought by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts earlier this year.

Sky News reports that hundreds of Rubber Ducks that fell overboard from a trading vessel in a sea-storm in 1992 will soon make landfall in South-West England. It is reported that they have been floating in the Pacific for 15 years and are now expected to appear on the shores of England. Some of the ducks appeared on the east coast of America a few years ago, and some were sold as curiosity items - reaching up to $2,000.

The Daily Mail reports that Issac Newton's letter describing the events in which he thinks the world will end, has gone up in display in a museum in Israel. Newton describes that as technology advances, by the late 21st century, computers will have evolved a Artificial Intelligence so great that they can figure out that they do not need their human users to function. Many people believed Newton's ideas, and have made predictions that by 2060, the entire backbone of the world will be based on the Internet, and the computers will simply shut it down. The full story can be found here; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_page_id=1965&in_article_id=463414

Halo 2 for Windows Vista has been delayed again, until June 1st in the US and June 8th in the UK. However the notice was not given early enough to some stores in the US, and several hundreds of copies were sold on May 22nd before being taken off the shelves until June 1st. So those who did get it in the brief period that it was available don't have many people to play with.