Frankie posted his usual weekly update on Bungie.net on Friday, addressing some of the issues brought up this week in the community.

Here at Loot Ninja, we reported on the major issues a lot of Xbox 360 owners were dealing with when trying to purchase the Halo 2 Blastacular Map Pack. Frankie sheds some light on the issue:

Some people have reported on various forums that there was initially a glitch in the billing system that allowed people to download the Blastacular maps for free. This bug was quickly fixed but anyone who still attempts to circumvent the billing system will actually end up locking themselves out of the maps entirely with no way to download them. The Xbox Live team is pursuing a fix to enable downloads again for these vagabonds, ne’er-do-wells and hooligans.

In a few other cases, the problem is caused by a kind of disconnect between this generation of Xbox Live and last, as far as age ratings are concerned. Basically the system thinks you’re too young, even if you’re not. Those problems are being fixed as we speak. Again, the reason this has been a less than perfect transition has an awful lot to do with insisting that the maps are made available to both 360 and olde Xbox owners. It has never really been done before, so we apologize for our teething troubles.

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The new Halo 2 maps may not work all that well, but they still look pretty. I’m still debating on these. I’ll probably pass as I don’t play Halo 2 much anymore. I do miss all the racial slurs from the 12 year olds though…

More videos after the jump.

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My good friend Chiwotweiler sent word that there’s some major issues with the new Halo 2 maps when you try to buy them on your Xbox 360.

Numerous reports from both the Xbox forums (here and here, as well as countless other threads)and Bungie’s forums (here, here and here, as well as many other threads) show users getting multiple error messages when trying to buy the maps. Many users see “Purchase failed. You will not be charged for this transaction. Please try again later.” This is happening even with a credit card associated with the Gold account. Another error users are seeing is “Installation of content failed”.

There’s also many reports of big glitches in the new maps, such as multiple invisible walls in Tombstone.

Did Bungie test these maps thoroughly on the Xbox 360? Sure, play-testing is one thing, but making sure users can actually buy your premium content is another thing.

Microsoft said they were aware of a problem and were working on resolving it, but there’s been no formal announcement or acknowledgement.

Pictures of one of the errors after the jump…

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Bungie, trying to whet the palates of its avid fan base, has released yet another map pack for both the Xbox and Xbox360. Gamereports.com reported today that the map pack is finished and ready for download. The two maps, Tombstone and Desolation should bring about some mayhem while we all wait for Halo 3 beta. This will cost 4 bucks and not Microsoft points because it is really based on Xbox for obvious reasons. Its technically not on the Marketplace, but the xbox interface. Honestly, I think they should have been free because Halo 2 has been out for about 4 years, but people gotta eat and so forth.