Last week it was Bill Gates claiming that Halo 3 would be ready in Spring 2006, in time to ruin Sony's PS3 launch party; now Robbie Bach, Microsoft senior vice president and chief Xbox officer, has decided to cast some doubt over those comments.

In a cover story on Time magazine last week, Bill Gates in apparent ecstatic mood was asking readers to picture a day when …Sony launches, and they walk right into Halo 3. That story, tying in well with the XBox 360 hype at E3, must have generated a positive buzz regarding Microsoft's future console prospects.

Now that E3 has been and gone, the waters need some muddying and the first volunteer was Robbie Bach who in no uncertain terms decided to put the Microsoft Chairman in his place, The World's throne I assume, as he stated …with all respect to Bill, I don't run Bungie's studio, and neither does he. We'll work with the Bungie guys and let people know, when they have something to announce. So Bungie doesn't belong to the rest of the world which Mr. Gates apparently does run.

What seems a bit more surprising is that Mr. Bach also stated that We haven't announced anything on what Bungie is doing or where we're going with the future of the ‘Halo’ franchise… Such a statement could raise some doubt as to whether Bungie is planning a clear sequel to Halo or some kind of spin-off while another possibility will be a quick numerical jump straight to Halo 360.