Halo: The Master Chief Collection

Halo Insider

Since I haven't reminded you to do so all year, please make sure you've registered for the Halo Insider program (or ensured your profile is up to date) if you're interested in participating in future MCC flights. While I can't personally guarantee that you'll get access to the flights you want, I do know that you'll need to be a Halo Insider to even be considered. Additionaly, including the information listed below on your profile will also increase your chances of being selected. For example, we can't invite you to a flight if you haven't opted-in to receive emails from us.

Register on HaloInsider.com

Verify the email address you've provided for communication

Opt-in to receive communications from us

Opt-in to PC flights

Link your Steam account

Upload/update your DxDiag

To follow our progress and preparation for flights, keep an eye on our dedicated Flighting Update thread.

Future Updates & FLIGHTS

This section is going to be pulled heavily from Postum's latest post in the Flighting Update thread mentioned above. You really should keep an eye on that thread. It's filled with weekly updates on the nitty-gritty details.

Game update

At 343 Industries, we value the inclusion of anyone who wants to participate and play the games we love building. With this value being a pillar of Xbox and Xbox Game Studios, the core of our next update includes improvements to MCC focused primarily on improving its accessibility. These changes may not be something that directly impact you as you may not use these features, but for those who want to enjoy the worlds of Halo, many for the first time, these are ones that will change their world. 343 is helping to lead the charge in these efforts and we hope our fans support us in making Halo more accessible.

We are continuing to make improvements to other areas of MCC and are making strong headway on several Known Issues across MCC (PC & Xbox). Some of these will changes are ones we will be flighting in our next PC flights while others have a slightly longer lead time and we will be able to speak to a little later in the blog. We know players are very eager to get some updates and improvements to key areas – and we are too – but a lot of these areas are fairly complex and just take time to work through.

MCC PC Flighting

At a high-level, our flighting goals are to verify future Halo: Reach updates and to bring us closer to Halo: CE Anniversary's launch on PC. Beneath those top-level goals are smaller objectives that need to be tackled to ensure the game has a solid foundation.

One of those more focused goals is to ensure the Intelligent Install feature works on PC at scale. This feature allows you to choose which titles, and even which parts of each title (Campaign/Mulltiplayer), you want to install on your machine so that you can manage the game's filesize based on personal preferences. Since MCC PC launched with one title, we want to make sure that we're not underestimating the challenges that present themselves when adding another game inside our game. We plan to flight this feature to ensure it is working as intended for both Halo: Reach and Halo: CEA.

Another targeted goal is to test a new crouch behavior in Halo: Reach. Before we change a movement mechanic like this out in the wild however, we want to get the thoughts from Halo Insiders on its feel, implementation, and effectiveness. We know players are really looking forward to getting their hands on this one, but we need to make sure it's accomplishing all the goals we want it to.

Again, with something like Halo: CEA's launch being the guide, each element inside of the game would considered a focused objective of flighting. As CEA flighting rolls out, we'll be monitoring it closely to validate the focused objectives such as dedicated servers, peer-to-peer connections, crossplay between Steam and Windows, etc. By making sure each of those aspects is looked at thoroughly and deliberately, we can all feel increasingly confident as we continue the journey to launch together.

Playlist Updates

After launching Halo: Reach, we've also kept a close eye on your feedback regarding its offerings in matchmaking. Our two most recent updates addressed a handful of hot topics including adding a ranked Halo: Reach Team Slayer playlist with DMR starts, which allowed us to increase the weighting of AR starts in social, and the removal of Team Slayer on Penance in the Halo: Reach Team Hardcore playlist.

To read further into the details of these weekly playlist updates, use the links below!