Originally released on the Xbox One, Halo: The Master Chief Collection hit our home platform back in late 2019 on Steam, the Windows Store, and the Xbox Game Pass for PC. And, since that time, it’s turns out it’s been really quite popular – Xbox Game Studios has revealed that Halo MCC has seen more than ten million players on PC.
We spoke to World’s Edge studio head Shannon Loftis about the studio’s plans for PC gaming in 2021 and beyond, who confirmed the eye-watering figure. “We have been kind of methodically and systematically expanding our game development capability for PC, both with our existing and established franchises, and also by adding brilliant studios that focus on PC forward gaming” Loftis tells us.
Touching on Microsoft’s acquisitions of big PC gaming studios like InXile, Obsidian, World’s Edge, and Bethesda, Loftis tells us, “then expanding, for instance, we released Halo Master Chief Collection on Steam in 2019 […] and we have over ten million people who have played the game since we’ve released it on Steam and Windows”.
Loftis also says that a huge proportion of these players had never played a Halo game. “Most of those people are new to the franchise. And so, we discovered a whole new cache of Halo fans that we wouldn’t otherwise have gotten to reach if we hadn’t released on Steam, and on Windows, and on Game Pass.”
This follows exciting news Xbox has shared about the next entry in the long-running FPS games series, too – Halo Infinite will have multiplayer cross-play and cross-progression across PC and Xbox, which means you’ll be able to dive in with your pals on console, and – as Loftis tells us – “your multiplayer customisation and progress follow you across all of your platforms”.
If you’re keen to keep up with Halo: The Master Chief Collection, you can head to the Halo Waypoint blog here. You can also read more about how Xbox’s plans to continue its “PC gaming journey in 2021 and beyond” in a new blog post at that link. Learn more about the history of the Halo PC series by checking out our guide.