Halo: The Master Chief Collection
Gamescom
Although it feels like I just got back, about two weeks ago I began my adventure out to Germany for Gamescom. While there, our team partnered up with the Xbox Game Pass team to bring Halo: Reach on PC to our fans in Europe, and it went extremely well. Even though it was the same build we had at E3, featuring a 10 minute demo of the Tip of the Spear campaign mission, Halo fans and PC enthusiasts came in droves to go hands on with mouse and keyboard.
Halo Insider - Firefight FLight
This past weekend our Publishing Team kicked off the second flight for Halo Insiders which contained Halo: Reach Firefight matchmaking. By granting access to 10,000 players we were able to get data for a few different KPIs (key performance indicators), such as the game's performance on various PC specs and player's ability to matchmake with one another.
Once we get survey results back from the flight's participants, the Publishing Team will dive into the results. After that, we'll work to release information about the flight, its performance, and key takeaways in a future Development Update. To be transparent here, it will take some time and will not be in Postums update tomorrow.
From the mountains of posts that I read online, it seemed like the majority of people liked what they played, which is a win in my books.
After lots of preparing, communicating, and anticipating, we've successfully copied over 6.6 million maps and 2.6 million game types from players' file shares on Halo 3, Halo: Reach, and Halo 4.
What's next?
We've broken down the next steps a few different times, but let's touch on them again to refresh your memory.
Before we can start transferring these map and game type files to Xbox One and PC, we need to do a bit more work to the current version of MCC. However, our intention is that the files will become available when Halo: Reach releases on both platforms (with Halo 3 and Halo 4 content on PC becoming available once those titles are released). When the update drops, simply log into MCC on an Xbox console and all the maps and game types will be copied down for you on that same gamertag's local files.
Players who want to pull their maps from these titles onto MCC PC will first need to load into MCC on an Xbox after the aforementioned update goes live (which saves them locally), upload them to their file share, and then download them onto their PC. It's a few more steps than console, but we're sure it will work out just fine.
Who's ready for some Jenga on PC?
Playlist Updates
As I try to mention in most Community Updates, although the Publishing Team is heads down on MCC PC, they still set aside time to fine tune matchmaking settings in MCC every week based on data and player feedback. Over the past few weeks these improvements have included adding new Forge maps, a Team Doubles preset in Social Games, H2A Fast Slayer as a temporary ranked playlist, and more. Read up on each of the playlist updates below:
Next weekend all eyes will descend upon Atlantic City for UGC's second Halo Classic event of the year. The first one in St. Louis was a ton of fun, so I'm expecting to hear nothing but good things about this one. From my understanding they've got an awesome venue in the Showboat Hotel, a solid talent lineup, and over $50,000 is prizing across tournaments for Halo: CE, Halo 3, and Halo 5.
