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June 13, 2019
To the surprise of almost nobody, Microsoft is working on a new Halo game for its next-generation Xbox console, and they showed off a trailer for the game during the company’s E3 press conference.
The new game is known as Halo Infinite and was teased in a trailer that takes place in space. In the movie, a marine comes upon Master Chief floating in space, rescuing him and activating his suit. Chief then decides to get ready and carry on fighting, blasting back into space to take on his enemies.
The new Halo will be a first-person shooter, just like every other major release in the game’s history, but will feature 4K visuals. The game’s unveiling comes alongside news that the Master Chief Collection is coming to PC later this year. The game will be compatible with the Xbox Elite Series 2 controller, and
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November 26, 2015
It should come as no surprise that Halo is one of the biggest selling franchises on the Xbox. Since the release of Halo 5: Guardians on the Xbox One, a lot of people have been wondering exactly how many sales the game has managed to make.
Now that data is slowly coming in about sales around the world, fairly accurate information on Halo 5's week one sales are being announced. According to VGChartz, a website dedicated to reporting video game sales, Halo 5: Guardians managed to sell approximately 1.46 million copies in its first week.
The exact first week number, according to VGChartz is 1,457,849 copies, although this does not include digital sales, so we could be looking at over 2 million copies at least.
For an Xbox One exclusive title, 1.46 million isn't bad at all, but it is quite small in comparison to previous Halo releases. In fact, Halo 5 Guardians sold less copies than almost every other Halo release. Here's a week one sales rundown of the last eight Halo games.
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October 26, 2015
After the very poor launch of Halo: The Master Chief Collection, it's no surprise that the community's trust for 343 Industries has been a bit strained. Thankfully, Halo 5 Guardians released this week with relatively no troubles at all. Thanks to the beta events and the pre-release leading up to the full game release on October 27, there were no major server issues on day one.
Whilst there were a few server hiccups here and there, for the most part Halo 5 Guardians has been silky smooth on matchmaking. The same can be said for the rest of the game too - Halo 5 Guardians has a very sleek 60fps that is seen everywhere in the game. Resolution is 1080p at it's highest, but sometimes it is downscaled to ensure that the 60fps frame cap stays consistent at all times.
The matchmaking service has been working fine all week and the new Spartan CSR ranking system is working just as expected. Every single playlist has been playing out fine, including modes in Warzone and Arena.
For
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September 29, 2015
There's no way to deny it. Halo: The Master Chief Collection launched with tons of issues and it completely ruined the possibility for many players to even play the game properly. 343 Industries has definitely taken the poor launch of the Master Chief Collection to heart though, and the boss of Xbox, Phil Spencer has spoken out about 343's promise to make sure Guardians is released without any problems.
"I know that of all of our teams, no team at their core feels the need to hit a great launch from a multiplayer and connection issues more than 343. That team took the issues around the launch of Master Chief Collection, it kind of hit them in the heart, because it's Halo Nation. It's the people who love these past Halo games."
Every time Phil Spencer has gone to visit 343 Industries, he's been impressed by their dedication to ensuring the quality of Halo 5, and it's multiplayer in particular, is as high as possible.
"No team is focused on it more than 343," Phil Spencer
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September 27, 2015
Halo: The Master Chief Collection will soon get an update that will finally add a system to punish quitters. As it currently stands, players can quit matchmaking games half way through with very little punishment which leaves games unbalanced and unfair, especially in team games.
Thankfully 343 Industries has nearly completed development for a system that will punish and discourage quitters. Unfortunately 343 didn't go into much detail about how the Master Chief Collection will punish quitting. Instead, a small blog post was listed to explain that the upcoming patch will "address a variety of areas, including ranking, will add new systems for quitting and penalties, and will improve a number of community items."
So far, 343 Industries has not set a release date for the changes, but it would be safe to say that the new changes will be released in a patch before the end of the year. Hopefully in between now and then we'll hear some further details about exactly how the quitting
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August 08, 2015
Infection is a game mode in the Halo franchise that has been around since Halo 2. Since then it's gone through various changes and in the latest version of Halo, infected players now appear as the flood.
Whilst infection has been in practically every version of Halo, the game mode has not yet been added to the Master Chief Collection. However, if the latest news from 343 Industries is anything to go by then the game mode should be coming to MCC soon as well.
In the latest weekly blog post on Halo Waypoint, 343 Industries detailed their upcoming plans for the Master Chief Collection, whilst hinting at an upcoming Infection update.
"The playlist team continues to work on future updates, and it's quite likely that we'll be talking more about things like Infection in the coming weeks," 343 Industries stated in their blog post. For those unfamiliar with the infection game type in Halo - it works similarly to the standard FPS 'zombies' or 'infection' mode that has been in
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April 04, 2015
Some new playlist changes have gone ahead in anticipation for the launch of the April update for The Master Chief Collection. The playlist changes include the introduction of Team Doubles, as well as a few other changes across the board.
Team Doubles is a pretty popular playlist that has been around since Halo 2, and it includes a variety of different game modes that can be played with 2 players on each team. The new Team Doubles playlist in The Master Chief Collection will include Halo 2 Classic, Halo 2 Anniversary, Halo 3 and Halo 4 maps.
Other changes include small tweaks to team sizes. For example, Combat Evolved team games now have 2 players on each team, instead of 2-3 players. 343 Industries have also been clear about their playlist plans for the future. The development team has revealed that they would like to add more playlists that give players a battle rifle at the start of the game, and they've expressed their interest in more team objective style playlists.
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March 27, 2015
Two new live action teaser trailers have been released for Halo 5, and they delve a little bit into what we can expect from the campaign in the upcoming game from 343 Industries. A lot of fans have been going pretty mad over the new trailers, and it's now very clear that Halo 5: Guardians is going to have a very dramatic twist to what we know of the Halo universe.
Both trailers depict the same scene, although one trailer shows it from the perspective of Agent Locke, a spartan that we have learned will be playable in Halo 5. The other trailer shows the scene from the perspective of the Master Chief.
In the first trailer, we see Agent Locke walking towards a battle-worn Master Chief. Locke talks a little about how the Master Chief was seen as a savior, but how he then lead to cause chaos and disaster. The trailer ends with Locke pointing a Magnum towards a weak, unresponsive Chief.
In the other instance of the trailer, the roles are reversed, and we can see the Master
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March 14, 2015
If you remember back to near when The Master Chief Collection was released, you may recall 343 Industries announcing that they will be releasing ODST as part of the collection to say sorry for the game's launch problems.
Even though we haven’t heard anything about the remastered version of ODST for a while now, 343 Industries haven't stopped developing it. In fact, a new blog post has just been put up on the 343 Industries blog, detailing their progress with the ODST game and the state of the Master Chief Collection.
Firstly, 343 Industries have revealed that there will be a new update in April that will further improve the game and fix any issues that are still plaguing the game. 343 Industries have also shown off two images. One shows ODST in all it's glory, and the other shows the new Halo 2 remake planned for The Master Chief Collection. The remake is Relic, and it should be coming alongside ODST.
Unfortunately 343 did not reveal when ODST or Relic will be released,
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January 29, 2015
A new Master Chief Collection update has been planned to improve online matchmaking, but strangely 343 Industries will not make the update available to all players straight away.
The update, which has since been delayed, was planned to fix many issues with the current in-game matchmaking system. Whilst 343 Industries did mention that they would release the update this month, new plans reveal that most players will not get to experience the update at all.
Before full release, the matchmaking update will be pushed to a select few US beta participants, and these members will be able to help stress test the matchmaking before it is finally rolled out globally.
To enter the beta process and be in with a chance of entering the matchmaking beta, you must reside in the US and join the Xbox One preview program. 343 Industries gave a small statement about the update.
"In recent weeks, we have been conducting extensive internal testing of an upcoming content update for