It’s looking increasingly like Halo: The Master Chief Collection will land on PC soon. While we still don’t have a release date for Reach, 343 Industries has given us the Halo MCC system requirements and a big breakdown of the new progression system – as well as details on how cross-progression and cross-play will work.
Sadly, cross-play is going to be a bit limited. The Windows Store and Steam versions of the game will be fully compatible with each other, but Xbox One will be left out, at least at launch. “As we’ve said previously,” 343 notes in the full blog post, “this is something the team will monitor and evaluate over time.”
But cross-progression and cross-saves will be much more robust. Your campaign progress, playlist completion, career stats, medals, and account rank all update on your Xbox Live profile, and will stay with you on every platform. Any achievements you’ve unlocked on the Microsoft side will automatically unlock for Steam when sign in on Valve’s platform.
The only real limitation is that your mid-mission checkpoints – whether in campaign or playlists – will not carry over between platforms.
MCC will move to a seasonal progression system after the launch of Reach. You’ll get points to level up your rank in every game, but the first unlocks will be exclusive to Reach – so the initial lack of parity between PC and console won’t matter here.
Somehow, one of the biggest upcoming PC games is an old console favourite. But hey – we’ve already waited long enough for Halo to return to home computers.