Bungie has announced that today officially marks the 5 year anniversary of Halo and as promised they have some very big news to share with everyone.

First Announcement: There will be an exclusive worldwide Halo 3 commercial airing during Monday Night Football on December 4th! Bungie says.

" As the press release mentions, this ad will feature CG scenes that are being built by a 3rd party agency (known as Digital Domain). Now you may be thinking to yourself – “CG!? But Bungie doesn’t do CG!” – and you would be correct… until now.

For the purposes of this holiday commercial and knowing the tight timeline with which it had to come together we decided a long time ago that utilizing real, final, actual gameplay just wasn’t the right thing to do. As you know, we’re very protective of our baby and we will only show it when we feel it’s ready to be shown (and even then it’s sometimes pried from our protective fingers). We all agreed that a cooler thing to do would be to move as far away from gameplay-style footage as possible, and make something more movie-like. Let our fans see what the Halo universe looks like in a photo-realistic fashion.

We didn’t want folks to think we were trying to pull the wool over their eyes, when we had such a great opportunity to do something cool and worthwhile.

Now don’t get me wrong – just because this ad isn’t gameplay doesn’t mean it’s not really cool. In fact, we provided the folks at Digital Domain with all of our new in-game models and assets. They then polished them up to movie CGI standards, animated them and rendered them to a degree of stunning beauty. There will be a lot to like in this ad and we’re happy with how it’s turning out. Just because you’re seeing a kind of “real-life” representation of Halo 3 doesn’t mean you aren’t seeing real gameplay elements from Halo 3."

Everyone will be happy to know that this new commercial will also show up on the Xbox Live Marketplace in 720p shortly after its shown on TV. Thats not all Bungie will also be releasing the next installment of their "making of" series on Xbox Live Marketplace which, according to bungie, "is going to give some new insights into elements of the campaign and will peel back the curtain on a certain prominent character in Halo 3."

Second Announcement: Bungie will be releasing 2 brand new halo 2 maps sometime next spring and this content will only be available on the Xbox 360.

Third Announcement (and quite possibly the biggest): Bungie will be releasing a public beta of Halo 3's Multiplayer sometime next year before the game is released! I repeat we will be playing Halo 3's Multiplayer over Xbox Live sometime next spring! They also drop a bit of info that there will be updates on Halo Wars and the still as yet unknown Bungie/Peter Jackson video game project which takes place in the Halo Universe.

Thats not all! Bungie has also provided us with a brand new screenshot from Halo 3's campaign which you can view here

Here is what Bungie had to say about the picture.

"A quick note about this shot - this is an actual screenshot taken from the actual game within an actual campaign level of Halo 3. When the MGS PR team asked me to give them a new image for an upcoming issue of Newsweek magazine, this is what we came up with. It's intentionally not meant to really reveal anything - we just wanted to give a glimpse of the latest Master Chief model and I thought the level that environment artist Frank Capezutto was working on provided a great backdrop. What's not to love about next-gen rusty beams and pipes? And best of all, it gives away absolutely nothing. We told you that Halo 3 was still very much in development and work continues on making the game look and play great. I think this is a cool snapshot of where the team is right now. We hope you enjoy it! :)"

Looking great thus far and the game is still a year away from release! While we all die in anticipation for some gameplay footage we'll have to make due with the tv commercial that airs the 4th of next month. Not that I'm complaining I'm sure the commercial is going to be incredible!