It's not. Halo fans can rejoice today with the announcement at the Tokyo Games Show that a new Halo 3 game would be released in 2009. Update - Microsoft has been in touch to let us know Halo 3 Recon will be a standalone expansion pack for Halo 3.

Halo 3 Recon, a prologue to the events which occurred in Halo 3, will hit Xbox 360s in Spring 2009 and feature a UNSC marine as the main character it has been revealed during the Microsoft keynote at TGS 08.

Bungie has also released a new trailer for the Halo 3 expansion pack, which we'll have up for your viewing soon. For now, let's all reminisce back to when Bungie said,

Bungie announces Halo 3, the third and final game in the Halo Trilogy. Halo 3 will be released for Microsoft's Xbox 360 in 2007...

Nobody saw it coming. Halo 3! Who knew? For the last year or two, people have speculated about what our next project was and surprisingly, in all that time, not a single person guessed that it would be Halo 3. Not one .

We declare it the best kept secret ever .

From the Bungie blog, no less. We're willing to wager that Halo 3 Recon was probably a better kept secret, Bungie. That's some talented misdirection though, we'll pay that.