Halo 2 Buzz Amplified By Insane Web-Marketing Tomfoolery

In what has to be one of the most peculiar marketing gimmicks ever witnessed, www.ilovebees.com has become part of the promotional drive leading up to the release of Halo 2 - or at least its beta version. Presented as simply A.N.Other random website about bee-keeping, the URL has apparently been invaded by some kind of viral, or indeed extra-terrestrial, interference.

An intrusive, bugged-out pop-up window leaps onto the homepage declaring “System Peril Distributed Reflex” with a countdown timer, marked “Countdown To Wide Awake and Physical” indicating that August 24th 2004 will be a date of some significance. Halo fanatics and Xbox disciples are now widely agreed that this pertains to a Single Player Demo Release – a viable possibility given the games proposed production timeframe.

Other weird faux-error messages hint at further Halo 2 details. It’s thought that when “network throttling erodes” on the 27th, the beta-testing phase will have been completed; and when “the medium begins to metastasize” in two weeks time, production of the actual discs will commence. A Google search for ‘metastasization’ could not confirm nor contradict this definition at time of press.

It wouldn’t be sensible to interpret this news without a sizeable blanketing of salt, bearing in mind its references to Halo 2 are entirely oblique and ambiguous. However, during the last few seconds of the Halo 2 cinema trailer, the xbox.com logo does momentarily flash into www.ilovebees.com, so there must be some relevance… surely? Either that or someone at Bungie has been staring at a monitor for too long.

Expect more Halo 2 news as soon as we’ve re-configured our SPAM filters to allow bee-keeping and honey related advertisements.