Rare Halo 2 E3 demo found on an Xbox devkit sold for over £4,000
Rare Halo 2 E3 demo found on an Xbox devkit sold for over £4,000
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Months after the original Halo 2 E3 2003 demo was made available to the public, a second demo has surfaced online – but not from Microsoft. Last November, Microsoft and 343 Industries (or Halo Studios as it’s now called) celebrated the 20th anniversary of Halo 2 by releasing a playable version of the game’s E3 2003 demo.
![[Halo Unreal Engine 5 demo Master Chief fighting an Covenant alien]](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/SEI_235951914-8a01.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=646)
It was a great treat for long-time Xbox fans and the perfect way to celebrate Halo 2’s anniversary, but it looks like that’s not the only E3 demo for the game to make its way online. This week, somebody managed to come across a different multiplayer build for Halo 2 that was shown during E3 2004 and has uploaded it online as a free download for preservation purposes.
The person responsible is X user Stian Schultz, a translator and video game store owner in Norway, who found the demo on an Xbox debug kit. They don’t say exactly how they came to acquire it, but they did admit to spending approximately $5,000 (roughly £4,100) on it.
They managed to upload the build to the Internet Archive, meaning anyone is free to download it. Although it apparently requires an original Xbox and is rather barebones, containing only Halo 2’s Zanzibar map. Being an old demo meant for demonstrating the game at public events, it was never going to be feature rich. But this will certainly catch the attention of diehard Halo fans and preservationists.
