Xbox Live Backstage Pass
Sweepstakes Winners Announced
Twenty Lucky Xbox Live Members To
Play Halo 2 Multiplayer at Bungie Studios Before November 9
Microsoft today announced the
winners of the Xbox® Live™ Backstage Pass Sweepstakes featuring Halo® 2. On
October 22, winners from around the world were drawn from more than one million
members of Xbox Live, the premier destination for online console gamers. The
lucky 20 Xbox Live members who won the sweepstakes will soon head to Bungie
Studios in Redmond, Washington to play Halo 2 multiplayer before the most
anticipated game of the year hits store shelves in North America on November 9,
2004.
Winners will enjoy an exciting two
days of gaming nirvana as they arrive in the Seattle area on November 3. After
being whisked away from the airport in a deluxe Hummer H2 stretch limo, complete
with an Xbox and TV, winners will be treated to a dinner and a good night’s
sleep at their hotel. On Thursday, November 4, winners will tour Bungie Studios,
grill Bungie studio manager Pete Parsons over lunch and of course play Halo 2
before anyone else.
For the complete list of winners and
for more information about the Xbox Live Backstage Pass Sweepstakes featuring
Halo® 2, please visit
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/news/backstagepasssweepstakes.htm.
A new frontier in imagination and
extraordinary interaction, Xbox Live offers rich online gameplay. The world’s
only global online console games service, Xbox Live is continuously innovating
to provide members with unparalleled experiences. This unique service unites
gamers together in a dynamic community where they can experience the best online
games, exclusive programming and continuous downloadable content. Xbox Live
launched in the United States in November 2002 and is available in 24 countries.
Please visit http://www.xbox.com/live for more information.
Pushing the Xbox hardware to its
very limits, Halo 2 will expand on everything that made the original game great,
plus add a wealth of technological and gameplay advances. Significantly improved
graphics, enhanced artificial intelligence (AI), an advanced real-time lighting
engine and destructible interactive environments are just a small part of Halo
2’s evolution of design and technology. Every improvement in Halo 2 is designed
to take gameplay to a new level — and in the end, to tell a more compelling
story.
Utilizing Xbox Live to redefine
online play, Halo 2 delivers superior online multiplayer capabilities. Whether
playing with a clan on a new multiplayer map, boarding a friend’s Warthog,
dogfighting in Banshees or checking player stats, Halo 2 will bring the social
experience to a higher level via Xbox Live. More information about Halo 2 is
available at http://www.halo2.com/.
Bungie was founded in 1991 with two
goals: to de velop games that combine brilliant technology, beautiful art,
intelligent stories and deep gameplay, and then sell enough of those games to
achieve the real goal of total world domination. Over the past 10 years it
produced games like the "Marathon Trilogy" and the first two "Myth" games,
hailed as classics by critics and gamers around the world. "Halo: Combat
Evolved," its latest game, has achieved phenomenal success on the Microsoft Xbox
video game system. More information on Bungie can be found at
http://www.bungie.net/.
Microsoft Game Studios is a leading
worldwide publisher and developer of games for the Xbox® video game system, the
Windows® operating system and online platforms. Comprising a network of top
developers, Microsoft Game Studios is committed to creating innovative and
diverse games for Windows (http://www.microsoft.com/games), including such
franchises as Age of Empires®, Flight Simulator and Zoo Tycoon®; Xbox (http://www.xbox.com),
including such games as Fable® and franchises as Halo®, Project Gotham Racing®
and MechAssault®; and MSN® Games
http://www.games.msn.com , the official games channel for the MSN network
and home to such hits as Bejeweled and Hexic™.
