Halo 3 beta delayed; ugliness ensues ...

So, the Halo 3 beta was supposed to be available today for Crackdown owners.

In short, it's not, and we don't know when it will be.

Joystiq's running "Halo 3 beta absent, internet explodes", which pretty sums it up.

Bungie.net's community manager Frankie O'Connor posts:

"Folks are reporting problems downloading the Halo 3 Beta via Crackdown this
morning. We have alerted the appropriate Live authorities and they are taking
care of the problem as we speak. More news as it comes in."

Now, I'm excited about Halo 3. But I didn't wait up all night like some folks did. I checked before I went to bed at 1, and again when I got up at 6 to run. Reading posts, there are folks who were (and are) staying awake to get the beta. As an example, there was a guy bragging about his stash of "Jolt Mints and Inferno gum" that (I suspect) makes him a little on edge right now.

It doesn't help that Microsoft mouthpiece Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb sent out a post at 4:19 a.m. saying, "As if you didn't already know, the Halo 3 beta is available for download for Crackdown owners."

And it wasn't. Which has got to sting those folks waiting with twitchy download fingers. And has got to be a bit of an embarrassing mistake coming from the Xbox Live Director of Programming. But I know how this stuff works, and he was probably told it was available, and he's not likely the guy directly making it available.

And "MajorNelson.com is Temporarily Unavailable due to abnormally high load. Please try back soon."

It'll be interesting to see if Hryb and ops manager "e" just make fun of gamers again in the weekly podcast. But maybe they learned from last time's bad press.