Virgin Gaming, Xbox 360 and 343 Industries have announced a rather massive free-to-enter (with an Xbox Live Gold account) tournament for Halo 4 with a huge prize pool of Halo-branded goodies, topped off with grand prizes of a UNSC-themed 2013 Ford F-150 ute, and the chance to appear in 343's next Halo game.

The tournament will be run by tracking players personal scores on the Spartan Ops, and War Games global leaderboards, and we've confirmed with our local Xbox contacts that Australian Halo 4 players will be eligible to participate.

Other prizes range from stuff like T-shirts, and DVD copies of the Forward Unto Dawn short film, to Halo-branded headphones, and the crazy portable-console-screen-in-a-suitcase GAEMS Personal Gaming Environment.

During the qualifier phase (Dec. 17 - Jan. 10), players will need to climb the ranks of the global leaderboards by competing in either the Spartan Ops or War Games leaderboard. After the qualifier phase, players will be tiered into three groups (based on their results on the qualifier phase leaderboards) and will enter the finals phase (Jan. 12 - Jan. 19). In addition, players can also participate in Weekly Challenges found on Halo Waypoint at http://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/intel/challenges for a chance to win great prizes.

During the finals, the leaderboards will reset and prizes will be awarded to the top performers in each tier. While terrific prizes are available within all three tiers, the grand prizes will be offered exclusively for those that have battled their way to the top tier.

Tournament information is available at both halo4infinitychallenge.com or halowaypoint.com however, we're told that "localised registration sites" will become available on December 12th, so you'll likely have to wait until then to register as an Australian player for the December 17th kickoff.

Yes, that really is a Ford F-150 dolled up like a Halo Warthog.