If you’ve recently picked up the latest Game Informer, you should have been treated to some new details around Halo 3: Recon. As noted in the game’s trailer which aired a few weeks ago, you’ll be playing the role of a regular ODST trooper in New Mombasa on the search for a lost group of soldiers. CVG has some nice details here.

For those of you that signed up to download an early preview of the New Xbox 360 Experience but didn’t get in, Microsoft is letting you in as of today. According to Major Nelson, if you signed up and provided a valid console ID, the next time you turn on your Xbox 360 you should be prompted to install the NXE. For the rest of us, we’ll just have to wait until Wednesday. For the details, click here.

Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the closed doors of a game developer? In an effort to get some answers and a little more clarity into this competitive industry, we interviewed Colin Lynch Smith, VP of NYC-based game developer Freeverse.

Snackbar Games: Can you tell us about how Freeverse started?
Colin Lynch Smith: My brother Ian graduated from Vassar with a degree in Cognitive Science, and spent the year after graduation sharing a house in East L.A. with a bunch of other recent grads who were writing screenplays and trying to break into the movie business. Ian didn’t really share their career goals, so he did a bit of temp work and started coding a Hearts card game on his old Apple Powerbook. It was revolutionary for its time, making use of a faux-3D perspective, talking characters, voice recognition and other cool stuff. He released it as shareware on AOL and started getting checks for $15 in the mail. He immediately became the wealthiest of his Dorito-eating slacker friends in the house…not a huge accomplishment, but it was better than temping, and Freeverse was born.

SB: Something most people may not realize is that you publish your own games as well as developing them. Can you tell us a little about how that process works and why you do it yourselves?
CLS: Need and rejection are the mothers of invention. As a Mac-focused developer, there was a very limited pool of publishing options, and after they all turned us down, we had to create our ownopportunities. So that meant building our own online store…and eventually learning how to design and print boxes and forging the relationships with distributors to get our titles onto shelves. We got very lucky on the retail side. When Bungie wasacquiredby Microsoft, they didn’t need a channel sales manager anymore. So he eventually became our channel sales manager and helped us navigate the verytreacherousshoals of shelf-space.

READ MORE

Well, all the speculation can be laid to rest with this latest trailer for Halo 3: Recon. Think you’ll pick up this expansion?