A total of 13.5 million hours were spent on the single player campaign according to Halowaypoint. In my opinion that is truly an amazing figure since most of the players keep the campaign mode for later and enjoy the online offerings first.  1,116,882, which is more than a million people completed the campaign in the first 5 days since release out of which 6% completed it on Legendary difficulty. A combined 2,675,140,836 kills were achieved during this period. Enough of the single player stats, now lets jump to the multiplayer ones.

16 million hours were spent playing War Games, 1.9 million hours in Spartan Ops, with 505,250,095 and 1,410,025,354 kills respectively, all  in 5 days. And if it’s Xbox Live there has to be those addictive achievements. A total of 43,335,060 achievements were unlocked in the first five days.

Pretty damn impressive. Halo was an amazing achievement by 343 Industries, the new caretakers of Microsoft’s premier franchise. We awarded it an excellent 9/10 in our review. You can read it over here.

Amazed by the statistics? Let us know in the comments section below.

According to the recently leaked information, Halo 4, unlike the first three first person Halo games released on the Xbox 360 (3, ODST and Reach), will be the first title in the franchise to output full, proper HD visuals at 720p.

Halo 4 will use a redesigned version of the engine that Halo: Reach ran on and will use FXAA to smooth the graphics in the game and give an output of full 720p. According to the Game Informer article that holds this information, the lighting and shading tech have also made “tremendous progress”. It describes one of the opening levels of the game as “”haunted and dim, but still sharp and detailed.”

“An air of reality and natural motion” is also given to the new character models since a new motion capture technology is in place, and it seems to be working much better than before.

Multiplayer details were also leaked- you can read them here. And just in case you don’t like what you read, 343 wants to remind you that Halo 4 still very much feels like Halo, and not COD.

After the recent multiplayer details of Halo 4 were leaked, fans became worried, because it felt more like Call of Duty and other popular shooter franchises than Halo. However, Frank O’Connow, 343 Industries’ franchise development director, wants to assure fans that it still “feels like Halo.”

“We can’t talk about the story in detail, because it is GI’s exclusive,” he wrote in a NeoGAF thread. “”I will say that some of the things that ‘invested, emotional’ players are ‘raising eyebrows slightly at’ are being very misinterpreted (‘random’ weapon spawns for example) but we will be able to clarify some of those things in due time.

“Some of the other features, abilities, are also being discussed with no context (not your guys’ fault, obviously) and frankly, a video of TS would probably allay many of the especially hysterical reactions, but we’re not there yet.

“We haven’t seen a single reaction we didn’t expect (apart from the Dax love story) and we will clarify a lot of this stuff 100% in the coming weeks and months. SOME of the things in here won’t be properly understood outside of a holistic experience (modes, progress, fictional setting, etc) but I am going to say one thing and leave it at that.

“It feels like Halo, it does NOT feel or act like the other game(s) it’s being compared to. Again, without playing it, you can’t be blamed for jumping to certain conclusions.”

Ryan Payton, creative director of Halo 4, who’s also worked as assistance producer on MGS4, has left 343 Industries, because he says he isn’t “creatively excited about the project anymore.”

Payton has left 343 Industries, but doesn’t regret working there at all. He has, however, set up his own company called Camoflaj, and has already begun work on two games.

“I had a great run at Microsoft,” Payton told Kotaku. “I don’t regret one day of it. But after a few years, there came a point where I wasn’t creatively excited about the project anymore.

“The Halo I wanted to build was fundamentally different and I don’t think I had built enough credibility to see such a crazy endeavor through.”

About his work on Metal Gear Solid 4, he said: “It was all a crash course on AAA game development. It was an experience that prepared me for a big budget, high risk project like Halo.”

He hired MGS4’s audio director Sotaro Tojima to work on Halo 4 too. “There’s no doubt that his Japanese sensibilities will bring a lot to the new game and I’m confident the game is going to sound epic,” he said.

Before leaving, Payton has confirmed that Halo 4 will have a very focused story. His comments fall in line with O’Connors’ earlier today, where he said Halo 4 was all about Chief and Cortana.

Halo 4- Concept Art

While 343 Industries might be kicking off an entire new trilogy with Halo 4 with its own name, they’re sticking with Master Chief, and they’re going to make sure Halo 4 is the Chief’s own story.

“We called it a new trilogy, but that’s really just a chronological description. It’s a direct continuation and evolution of the Master Chief’s story,” director Frank O’Connor told 1UP in an interview.

“We’re going to be pretty front and center about that. This is about the Master Chief and we’re going to make him a deeper and richer character than he’s been, but just in the way that I’m sure Bungie would have naturally done anyway.”

But fear not- they’re not going to give Chief’s personality a big overhaul. He won’t suddenly become very talkative or dark or gritty. “You’re just going to learn more about him, and that’s the best way to explore anybody’s character.

“The Chief has had a strange, difficult, and brutal life. And I think people want to know a little bit more about that – that’s one of the attractions of the books and it’s something that we’re able to put into the games very easily, and something we’ve always wanted to do.”

O’Connor also said that while they’re not going to clone Bungie’s style of game-making, they’re not crazy enough to mess with a winning formula.

“We had a lot of people saying, ‘Why does the Chief’s armour look different?’” he said. “Well, the Chief’s armour has looked different every single game. It’s a natural evolution of trying to make your graphics better and having different artist approach it.

“But in the case of the trailer in particular, there’s some fairly radical modifications to his armour. Some of those are definitely an artistic evolution, but some of it is connected to the story. We just can’t talk about it yet. He’s been in space for a long time.”

He also talks about Cortana, about how her 7-year lifespan in coming to and end, and drops some hints about what might lie in store for her in Halo: Reclaimer Trilogy.

“Cortana was getting close to the end of her natural lifespan at the end of Halo 3. The reality is that Cortana has been exposed to far more information and far more technology than any other A.I. in existence,” he said.

“So she’s going to develop some weapons and some muscle from that process, but it also directly contributes to her rampancy [AI overload] – that much information and that much thought, that makes things worse.”

Halo 4 releases in 2012 exclusively for the Xbox 360.

At the ongoing Halo Fest, 343 Industries announced that the new Halo trilogy, featuring Halo 4, 5 and 6, will be called The Reclaimer Trilogy. The little, round AI probe in the series called Guilty Spark (also the namesake of 343i) is often called the Reclaimer.

343 have also announced the game will have much larger focus on Master Chief, Cortana and 343 Guilty Spark.

Stay tuned for more info.

With Halo now being developed by 343 Studios, the newly announce Halo 4, 5 and 6 proves that Halo is one of the few franchises that refuses to lay down to rest.  Above is the Official 10 year Anniversary Halo Fest Trailer from IGN.  Keep it here for the latest updates on everything Halo, while Gears of War 3 will own the month of September as GamingBolt.com with giveaways galore as well as constant updates until the actual release.

The Halo 4 Panel at PAX 2011 is streaming on IGN right now, so head over to there now to catch it before it is over.  Here is the link: http://www.ign.com/events/halo/2011/live-video.  Halo 4 through 6 will be known as the Reclaimer Trilogy which is news to me.  If you missed it we will have re-caps and more info on the newly announces  Halo Trilogy, as well as the links below giving you access to future Streams going on at PAX.

IGN’s full statements regarding  the Halo 4 Trilogy:

While the ten year birthday of Halo: Combat Evolved and the upcoming Halo CE Anniversary release are clearly the focus of the first Halo Fest at this year’s Penny Arcade Expo, the continuing adventures of the Master Chief aren’t far from anyone’s mind. At 343i’s Halo 4 panel on Saturday morning, Josh Holmes discussed the impending Halo trilogy and revealed the name of the upcoming three-game series: the Reclaimer Trilogy.

Astute Halo fans will recall that Guilty Spark, the AI presence from the original Halo installation in Combat Evolved (and namesake of 343i), often referred to the Master Chief as the Reclaimer throughout their interactions. Guilty Spark also plays a prominent role in Halo CE Anniversary’s new addition to the original game, the Terminals.

Be sure to check back at www.ign.com/events/halo for more on Halo Fest throughout the weekend, including live streams of every Halo Fest panel at PAX!

Fran O’Connor, creative director at 343 Industries, currently working on Halo 4, thinks the Xbox 360 has not reached its full potential yet, it hasn’t been tapped out, not even with last year’s Halo: Reach.

“Pushing console hardware to its limits has been a part of gaming since Activision stuck a DSP in Pitfall 2 for the Atari 2600,” said O’Connor in an interview with NowGamer. “Even as a kid, I remembered thinking that it was cool that my console could always squeeze a few more tricks late into its life cycle. The 360 has been incredibly successful in no small part thanks to its flexibility and technical headroom.

“The thing is not tapped out yet, and I expect devs to be coaxing marvels from it for years to come. Our team has great experience with the hardware and will have a few surprises of its own.”

Well, games like Gears of War 3 do seem to be pushing the system’s limits. Anybody who’s had a look at the game’s videos would agree. Halo games have never been known to have stunning graphics though, so we’re interested in what 343 has in mind.

Stay tuned to GB for more info.

Here is the latest trailer for Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary Edition from 343 Industries narrated by ‘Guilty Spark’, the Monitor of the Halo installation visited in the first game in the series.  The new completely remastered version of the first Halo game will have seven of the most popular multiplayer maps in Halo history ready for Xbox LIVE, also including new features such as cooperative play over Xbox LIVE, Achievements, new challenges, and new fiction to uncover.  Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary will release for Xbox 360 on November 15 2011, exactly ten years after the original launch of the first Halo game.