Bungie.net has the abortive results of their countdown announcing that the timer had been ticking down to an E3 announcement that they are no longer going to make (thanks nin). Xbox 360 Fanboy has several updates with a chronology of what happened, one of them leading to a Joystiq article with a number of updates as well. In short, it seems the countdown ended with a teaser related to the Halo Superintendent as shown in these screenshots, but this update was then removed with an explanation that plans for an announcement have been changed by their publisher (subsequently identified as Microsoft Game Studios). In what may or may not be related news, Microsoft Confirms That Bungie Is Developing New ‘Halo’ on MTV Multiplayer has word from MGS's Don Mattrick that the studio is at work on a Halo project that's neither Halo Wars, nor Peter Jackson's upcoming movie. Here's the explanation that was posted on Bungie.net in lieu of an announcement:

From: Harold Ryan
Sent: Tuesday July, 15, 2008 7:00 PM
Subject: E3 Announce

For the last several months, we've been building toward a reveal of something exciting that Bungie is working on. We were looking forward to sharing that with our fan community during the week of E3. However, those plans were just changed by our publisher.

We realize that many of our fans are disappointed by this turn of events; members of the Bungie team share that disappointment.

When the right time comes, we look forward to sharing this exciting announcement with you. Until then, we appreciate your continued support and patience.

Harold Ryan
President
Bungie LLC