A few days ago we posted the results of a Eurogamer test that showed installing Halo 3 to the hard drive with the new NXE actually caused load times to increase. Bungie has posted an update on their site explaining the reasons for this. It’s fairly technical, but the short answer is that Halo 3 already copies data to the hard drive, so when you install the game to the hard drive, the hard drive is doing twice as much work to read information from the cached data and to also read information from the installed game. A hard drive can’t read data from two places at once.

The full explanation is over at Bungie’s site. They also don’t seem optimistic that a fix for the issue will be forthcoming.

Bungie’s big announcement happened yesterday at the Tokyo Game Show.  Apparently the latest Halo project is going to take you on a mission as an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper (ODST) Marine.  The game boasts the same 4 player co-op, new campaign missions and a new multiplayer experience.  Fall 2009 is the date, so it’s still a long ways off.  Plenty of time for you to load up your Halo 3 copies and get to practicing.

Bungie is heavily rumored to make a major announcement at the Tokyo Game Show, probably at Microsoft’s keynote happening in a scant few hours.  Should we be worried about the keynote’s cheeseball title- “A Canvas for the World.“?  Maybe not, as the new Xbox Experience and dashboard/avatar features are certain to be a focal point.

Other things to expect-  Some big, new Live Arcade titles from Japanese developers (hints at the creators of Rez and Ikaruga bringing the newness to us…).  On the RPG front, Mistwalker (Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon) should unveil their next project.  The infamous Tomonobu Itagaki (Ninja Gaiden, Dead or Alive) is also reported to be making an appearance, rumored to have been snatched up by Microsoft directly after all the drama with Tecmo.

But back to Bungie.  Speculation runs rampant.  They had something prepped for E3.  They rushed it.  And then never got to show it.  TGS looks like the time we shall.  Sources from across the internets decalre key Bungie personnel are on the floor at the show right now.

And with baited breath, we wait…

Via the folks at GAMER.tm: “Bungie is to announce its much talked about new game next week, an industry insider has revealed.

“Speaking to GAMER.tm, an industry insider has confirmed that Microsoft is due to hold an event in Europe next week, where Bungie is due to take the wraps off its next game – the first title the studio has developed since splitting from Microsoft.

“Unfortunately, our source – who obtained this information directly from Microsoft – was unable to confirm what that game will be. As such, it’s unknown whether the new title will be Halo 4, or indeed whether it will be related to the Halo universe in any way, shape or form.

“Our source also revealed that Rare may be set to announce a new game as well.”