Master Chief is cute because it’s carved from a green pumpkin. Akuma is cute because it’s a dad’s contribution to his family’s pumpkin count, which is about to get bigger by one. And the Spy could potentially be cute, if you ever got that mask off him.

The “mystery game” is actually an iPhone game called Sneezies sent my way by an enterprising iPhone dev who apparently knows how to carve a pumpkin.

Mad pumpkin respect to Jacob Hemphill, Jordan Rubow, Jimmy LeBlanc, Easy Tiger, Joe V. and Gavin Bowman!

Five more days of pumpkin-loving left, Kotaku. Get ‘em done!

The Halo franchise has sold more than 25 million copies combined so far, with Halo 3: ODST, the recently released standalone game, making up a good 10% of that in just two weeks on store shelves. Along with next year’s prequel Halo: Reach, Bungie and Microsoft have a whole lot of Halo going on. There’s a new comic book series, Blood Line, kicking off in December, the Halo Legends anime, the Halo: Evolution anthology novel, and the trilogy from acclaimed science fiction author Greg Bear, due out next year. And you know Todd McFarlane isn’t going to stop milking the franchise anytime soon.

But with all of this Halo merchandising, there’s still something missing. Where’s Master Chief? Bungie’s Frank O’Connor says that everyone’s favourite Spartan can’t possibly be gone for long.

As for Master Chief, odds are he will be seen again. “I think that (his) fate, Cortana’s fate and the identity of that giant, dark planet at the ending (on the game’s hardest skill level) – that’s a spoiler – are probably big mysteries that would be irritating if they were just cliffhangers,” O’Connor says. “We do have a plan that goes out at least six years,” he says. “Eventually, it will become very apparent that there is a plan for the way the canon all ties together and the way the comic books and the novels all tie together.”

See? They have a plan, and once it comes to fruition, the world will tremble at their feet…or at least be really happy to see MC and Cortana again.

Video game ‘Halo’ spins off books, action figures and more [USA Today]

I suppose you can cinch up the hood and create a semi-Spartan helmet visor look with it. Still, this garment seems to be more to be a demonstration of Big Brand A + Big Brand B = $$$$, rather than of street cred or gamer bonafides.

Marc Ecko Master Chief Hoodie [Street Level]

[This post is the fourth in a series that recounts the chain of questions and answers I solicited from the people I interviewed during E3. I asked each of my interviewees to ask a question of the next one. Hence: Chain Interview.]

Shane Kim, Microsoft corporate vice president for long-term strategy in the Xbox 360 group responds: “We’re really pleased to have Take Two and EA doing well on our platform with their sports games. So sports as a gaming genre is obviously very important.

“The way I think about sports is in a broader context. Sports is something that hundreds of millions of people are super-passionate about. That’s where I think the opportunity is for us to do really interesting things with Xbox 360 and Xbox Live. While you can pick a number from a hat – [there are] six or seven million people who play Madden, there are a 100 million people who watch the NFL during the season. That’s a very interesting market. So can we create an experience on our platform for that a football enthusiast or a basketball enthusiast or a baseball enthusiast…?

(At this point Kim got up and directed my attention to an Xbox 360 that was running a demo of a new service that will show Premier League soccer matches in a window that is surrounded by an audience of Xbox Live avatars. In the margins there was room for trivia and metagame stats based on the number of fans logged in from each team)

“That’s not a soccer game, but that’s Premier League live matches being broadcast on Xbox Live surrounded by our social entertainment experience… This is a much better video gaming experience to me than just watching the game.”

Impressive, Shane, but did you have a question for your former Microsoft colleague Peter Moore, the head of EA Sports who I would be interviewing next?

He did.

Shane Kim asks EA Sports chief Peter Moore : “What Microsoft executive do you miss the most from the Xbox group?”

I saw Moore in one of EA’s meeting areas, and after an interview I tested his wit by seeing how he could answer Kim’s question.

Peter Moore responds: “Whilst that is like saying, which of my children do I love most, boy, it’s got to be Master Chief. It’s got to be.”

I pointed out that Master Chief is not an executive. Laughing, Moore quickly replied: “He’s responsible for more revenue than anybody else I left behind there. ”

Fair enough. And did he have a question for my next interviewee, his boss and EA CEO John Riccitiello?
He did. Some context: most of the parking spots at EA’s headquarters are not reserved. Moore told me only two are, for electric cars. So…

Peter Moore asks EA CEO John Riccitiello: “How can you live with yourself by deliberately buying an electric car so you can get a reserved parking spot at Electronic Arts?”

Please come back for the answer and the final key links in our Chain Interview.

The “Future Soldier 2030″ being planned at the Army’s Soldier Systems centre in Natick, Mass., is the subject of much oohing-and-ahhhing in today’s New York Post. The basis of tomorrow’s fighter is a “soldier as a system,” philosophy that more or less regards soldiers as battlefield assets like tanks or planes.

Some of this “system’s” features include a HUD inside the helmet; voice commands that unlock a weapon or set it to less-than-lethal force, a powered exoskeleton to increase a soldier’s movement endurance and even “neural prosthetics” and “drugs that aid cognitive ability.” The Army allows that those enhancements might be “controversial now, but perhaps ubiquitous in 2030.”

I suppose it’s only a natural evolution, the Army’s designs somewhat trailing the epochal history of combat games; from flight sims to drone aircraft, FPSes to cyborg soldier.

Soldier of the Future [NY Post, and graphic; thanks randlsa]

Hey, you got your Hello Kitty in my Master Chief! You got your Master Chief in my Hello Kitty! Two great tastes that… eh… perhaps not.

Yessir, that’s a custom pink Master Chief with Hello Kitty tattooed/embossed on his arse, kneepads, “HK47″ rifle and shield. In other words, it looks like the kind of eye-gouging abomination that only an eight-year-old kid sister could create out of her big brother’s action figure collection. And then some. You can Buy it Now! for US$49.99 on eBay.

The action figure is deliberately gender ambiguous, according to the seller (who also advises: “Please be aware that with all paints there is always a chance of wear and tear (especially in the jointed areas of an action figure, so please remember to be careful!)”). Holy shit, I just went punctuation, close parenthesis, quote mark, close parenthesis and punctuation and it was correct.

Check out that Emma Frost Hellfire Club fireplace behind Chief. Unfortunately, you don’t get it with your 50 bones.

Meowster Chief [Hawty McBloggy]