Niiiiiiiiiice

Is this the earliest a commercial has ran before the game came out?

I want to see the full 2:30 minute trailer before I judge but based off that the ODST live action trailer was definitely better. One thing I didn't like was that the augmentation process was the most painful experience the Spartans had ever gone through, heck the majority of the children die due to the procedure. In the novels its described like shattered glass inside their veins and hot needled poking their muscles. Yet none of that pain was shown in this trailer.

What you are talking about is the process for the Spartan IIs not the Spartan IIIs.  I'm sure the process was still very painful for them, but the newer process had a 100% success rate, whereas the previous one had a 50% fatality (failure) rate.  You can also tell that this is the IIIs process, given some clues, such as the Armor, which the IIs didn't have when created.  A SPARTAN II was as costly as a destroyer, which was also why many in the top brass had reservations about Halsey's pet project.

The real discrepancy is the count of IIs remaining, since Studios 343 needs to explain who died when...as it stands, there can be no more that around 12-16 surviving IIs, and as far as IIIs go, of the 900 created, less than a third of them are still alive, and delta company was never initiated.  So in short, the video is correct.

Cool trailer...M$ SO needs to get the movies made. 

I thought it was decent.

You mean only six days before the advertised product comes out?

It's clearly an ad for the beta/ODST /XBLive and the Xbox 360 brand.  It says it clearly.  Yes, it produces early awareness for Reach, but it has a reason for being out now.

I believe the first Halo 3 TV ad aired on Monday night football nearly a year before release - the Starry Night trailer?  I think it was December 6-ish the prior year?

bump: just embeded a better version

Very cool though I think the full version will be even better. THe wait for Reach is going to be so hard.

That was so cool.