Halo 2 arrival box shots

[Jancelot]

Snatched from OO:

Pics

Drool.

[Chaz]

edited to protect the children.

[AgtFox]

Yeah, I'm sure almost every major store already has their shipment waiting in the back.  I wonder how weak Microsoft will be on the street date.  They broke it for Project Gotham Racing 2 last year, I got mine on the Saturday before release.

[Chaz]

They're going to hold firm on the release date.  There's too much marketing out there with the 9th on it, and too many stores are doing major midnight madness events.  If they were to launch early, they'd have a lot of retailers pissed off at them.

[TheMissingLink]

I played a guy at ESPN NHL last night who told me he had it...I didn't believe him until about 5 minutes after our game ended he sent me an invite to play Halo 2 with him  :shock:

[Kevin Grey]

Over on Gaming-Age at least two people were able to pick it up from Meijer stores (a retailer I'm not familiar with).  Box shots were posted to prove it.  

I agree with Chaz- no way in hell does MS let the streetdate lapse on this one.

[Turtle]

I assume these are happening at smaller non corporate stores, or from the staff there.

I have two such stores near me, and my copy is reserved there.  They're a friendly sort shop, so hopefully I can convince them to part with a copy.

[AgtFox]

They're going to hold firm on the release date.  There's too much marketing out there with the 9th on it, and too many stores are doing major midnight madness events.  If they were to launch early, they'd have a lot of retailers pissed off at them.

Don't you work for EB?  They must be a bit lax if that's your hand on the game case in the pic

I am also in agreement that they'll hold firm to it, but I've seen weirder things happen before...

[Chaz]

Hey, who said that's my hand in the pic?  I certainly didn't say it was.  You can't prove nothin'.

Yeah, I do work for the evil empire.  Word from the top guys is that if any store sells a copy before 12:01 am, November 9, that the entire staff of the store as well as their district manager will be fired immediately.

Of course, who knows how serious he is, but I'm sure not tempting fate.

[AgtFox]

Hey, who said that's my hand in the pic?  I certainly didn't say it was.  You can't prove nothin'.

Yeah, I do work for the evil empire.  Word from the top guys is that if any store sells a copy before 12:01 am, November 9, that the entire staff of the store as well as their district manager will be fired immediately.

...until Wal-Mart sells them early, then all bets are off

No one ever said it was your hand, that's why I had the wink.

[Chaz]

Well, just in case it was my hand, and I'm not saying it was, I decided to take the pics down on the off chance that Big Brother's watching.  

[Turtle]

Actually, I think Wal Mart might not considering they'd be going up against Microsoft.  They're both giants, and the subsequent legal wrangling between them could seriously hurt both companys' stock.

[Thin_J]

Kind of angers me that Meijer broke the date. There's one within 10 minutes of here, and I would have at the very least checked it out had I known.

I'm sure they've stopped selling them by now though, wouldn't you think? Or can someone confirm that they're still selling despite the date?

[Kevin Grey]

It doesn't look like the Meijer slip was company wide- only a few stores and they evidently stopped shortly after the offending copies got through (I'm sure the resulting barage of phonecalls tipped them off that something was up).

[Turtle]

My local store just let me know that they definitely don't have it yet, but they'll sell it as soon as they get it.  They're literally so small that the corporates don't know about it.

Here's to hoping they get a surprise shipment tomorrow.