FNintendo

When Bungie became a privately held independent company, it appeared the Halo series would end with Halo 3. This talk was hushed by the announcement of Halo: ODST which we can expect to hear more of in Microsoft’s E3 conference in just less than 24 hours, but there may be more than we expected from Halo at the event.

Kotaku earlier reported that a Halo: Reach forum was spotted on Bungie.net which led them to believe that it could be a new Halo title, but a discovery made by Console Monster may just have confirmed this rumour. On an achievement scout earlier today, I discovered the following:

It’s been known for Microsoft to create achievement pages for titles that aren’t games, but with the novel: Halo: The Fall of Reach releasing in 2001, well before achievement pages existed, this may just be the evidence Halo fans were looking for, to confirm the existence of a new Halo title.

Halo: Reach snagged early from Microsoft's servers

Continuing in the sad tradition of Halo 2 and 3 before it, Halo: Reach has apparently been leaked. Modders at Game-Tut.com found a way to trick Microsoft's servers, which are currently hosting the full game download. The download is intended for select media and only accessible with a code -- well, until Game-Tut apparently cracked that security measure. The site has yet to openly leak the files to the general public.

It appears that the game is leaking other places as well. At least one video released shows off a tour of Forge in the game's Firefight mode, and spoilers for the game can be found everywhere from Bungie's official forums to NeoGAF (if you really want to see them, you can find them yourself).

While Microsoft and Bungie will be hosting the usual slate of Halo review events around the world in the coming weeks, it appeared as though the companies were relaxing around the usually tightly-controlled media access to the series by uploading the game to Xbox Live. Unfortunately, the system proved vulnerable to the insatiable demand for Halo, which facilitated another early game leak for this high profile franchise.

Update: A Microsoft spokesperson told Joystiq, "We are aware of claims being made regarding a security exploit related to Halo: Reach and are aggressively investigating the matter. We have no further details to share at this time."