Microsoft loves to bring together late night television and the Xbox. The Kinect (née Project Natal) was on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon just one week after being unveiled, and Epic Games' Cliff Bleszinski last year stopped by his studio to premiere Gears of War 3. (You could arguably go even farther back to Microsoft's own 2005 MTV special debuting the Xbox 360.) Now it looks like Conan O'Brien, who Microsoft once tried to woo to make a show for Xbox Live, may himself be the platform for some major Halo 4 news.

Near-simultaneous tweets this afternoon from from both Alison Stroll, Senior Producer for Halo 4 developer 343 industries, and Microsoft spokesperson Major Nelson not-so-subtly suggest "Team Coco" will have big news for the highly-anticipated sequel. (For their part, neither @teamcoco nor @conanobrien have retweeted or made reference to any announcement.) As Major Nelson specified in the next 24 hours and Stroll said tomorrow, we suspect it won't be related to Conan's show itself.

No other details are being offered, but we've heard from reliable sources close to Microsoft that the team may have finalized a release date for Master Chief's return: Tuesday, November 6th, 2012. We've also heard that it'll be announced before noon ET tomorrow. Though development cycles tend to fluctuate, locking down a pre-Black Friday release date this early gives Microsoft's marketing team ample time to plan for what we'd suspect will be one its biggest game launch this year. Will Conan and the gang be announcing the launch date? We'll know soon enough.

Look for #Halo4 news on the way in the next 24 hours. Hint: @TeamCoco plays a part! — Larry Hryb (@majornelson) April 16, 2012