Halo ODST unexpectedly shows up on the internets...

I just caught this browsing around on the 'net for news and can only think that 2009 is turning out to be the Year of the Leaked Game.

Halo ODST is a standalone expansion to the Halo series casting the player as an ODST trooper sent in to back up Master Chief with their own mission. The leak was already reported earlier as having come from France with Microsoft making the magnanimous decision NOT to ban early recruits, especially when they claimed that only about a hundred copies had actually gone out.

You can catch some of the footage below (which is all in French with English subs). It probably goes without saying that if you don't want to be spoiled before the September 22nd release date, don't watch it.

But now it looks like there's an actual distro out on the 'net as reported by several sites such as fan-based halo.bungie.org. It was only a matter of time before this happened, but you can bet that Microsoft won't be looking at this particular incident in the same way as the accidental release of legit copies above.