The next Halo: The Master Chief Collection PC flight – that’s a fancy name for a beta, if you haven’t been keeping up – was set to cover Firefight mode, and it was set to begin in July. At the time, the developers noted that the timing could shift, and obviously it did. The developers say that this is due to some “severe blocking bugs,” but they’re as committed as ever to making sure MCC is the best it can be on PC.
In short, those bugs would’ve kept the Firefight flight – or FireFlight, as the devs are calling it – from working as intended. You can get a more technical breakdown of what the studio is working through in the full blog post, but the bottom line is that there’s more work to do before FireFlight is ready.
“There seems to be a lot of public perception that as flighting goal dates have been missed that the project itself is going to suffer in the quality department,” the developers say, “but that’s the opposite of what the reality is. In order to meet the high-quality bar the teams have set for this project, these delays are to ensure it is the best it can be.”
But broadly, it sounds like MCC for PC – both flighting and the full, proper release – is running behind the schedule the developers originally had in mind. The devs say the delays are because the want to bring “MCC to PC and Halo: Reach to MCC the right way.”
The breakdown adds “does it mean people have to wait a little bit longer? Yes. Does it mean a worse product is coming? No. It means the games are being developed with the highest quality bar possible in mind and to ring that bell again, it’s ready when it’s ready.”
So don’t expect an official release date for FireFlight or the proper release any time soon. “We have not and will continue to not publicly announce dates of when this will happen as we are actively in development of the flight,” the devs say.
“As we’ve seen thus far, often times even our best estimates end up shifting as the team works through the production and development realities of this complex project.”
