Strategic reasons as to why MS is releasing Halo 3 early ?

Could it be for one of the following reasons:

1. GTAIV is coming out mid October for both 360 & ps3, and there is a 3 week gap between its release and the release of Halo 3 on September 25th. If that '3 week gap' was after the release of GTAIV then it might hurt Halo 3 sales, as possibly more consumers will buy the ps3 just for GTAIV as it MIGHT get the 'better' version.

2. GRAPHICS. MS knows that games like GTAIV, Mass Effect and MGS4 have better graphics than Halo 3, so if it released Halo 3 in mid-November after those games mentioned then they would steal the thunder away from Halo 3.

3. Cooler Xbox 360 using the 65nm cpu will be released maybe by years end or early 2008, so by releasing Halo 3 earlier it can shift a lot more current Xbox 360s and finish their current stock, in time for their new cooler chip Xbox 360.

In terms of strategy which reason would you think MS has gone for ?

In case you haven't noticed the PS3 has a number of games coming out in September....including Killzone 2 and Heavenly Sword.fore_runner

hmmmm killzone or halo. a sequal to a fantastic shooter or a sequal to a run of the mill shooter.

i think they are doing it this way so the consumer can see that u can play both gta and halo, two of the biggest franchises in industry, on the same system and boost sales this way. also IMO halo will have 2mil plus on preorder some of these copies will also be purchased with consoles.

did't gears get released in september aswell?

I think they chose to release it when they did because thats when the game will be ready to ship. ;)CooVee

 I agree with that.

And who says that is is releasing early, the date of 11/01/07 wasn't officially announced it was just speculation