Halo: The Master Chief Collection News

AGDQ 2021 raises $2.7 million for charity

January 10, 2021 Donations for AGDQ 2021 closed at $2.7 million dollars

It's always a treat to see a world record speedrun happen at a Games Done Quick event, especially when that record is about the event itself. AGDQ 2021 crossed the $1 million USD threshold this week faster than any event in the organisation's history, leading to a whopper $2.7 million the event's end.

AGDQ 2021 crossed $1 million raised for the Prevent Cancer Foundation on Thursday, January 7, during SasquatchSensei's Halo 3 PC run. That run itself was a bonus donation incentive which got met pretty slowly, but it looks like it did its job to help push GDQ to new heights.

The vast majority of donations tend to come in during the final day, and sure enough, $1.3 million was more than doubled to $2.7 million during the last day. Historically, GDQ has tended to regularly top itself each time out, though SGDQ 2020 was the first exception to that rule. That event, the first online GDQ and the first amid the current pandemic, pulled in about $700k less than its predecessor.

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Halo online services on Xbox 360 being cut off December 2021

It's the end of an era, or rather, it will be come December next year. That's when the online services for the Halo series on the Xbox 360 will be cut off, 343 Industries has announced.

Revealed in an official news post, the developer has given a timeline for when the 360 versions of the FPS games will lose much of their online functionality. As of now, players can no longer buy the space games on the 360 online stores, though all the DLC will remain available. Between now and the end of 2021, there will be continued reminders, before December 2021, on a date no sooner than December 18, when the Halo games will become almost purely single-player on the Xbox 360.

Impacted games include Halo 3, Halo Reach, Halo 4, and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, and a handy chart tells you exactly what game is losing what. Matchmaking, file sharing, challenges will all be gone, but online squads will remain, and your service record and player customisation in Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST. Splitscreen and LAN will still be there too, so you can still play with all your mates, you'll just need to wire up a room full of consoles and TVs, like the good old days.

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MCC Development Retrospective – December 2020

Postums here welcoming you to the latest and greatest MCC Development Update. Our December 2020 blog will be talking about the Great Journey of bringing MCC to PC. With it, we wanted to take some time looking back on the year, talk about tomorrow’s game update, and hear some of the team’s personal reflections on the development road we’ve all been on. Also, we want to shed some light on what blogs, streams, and communications will look like next year for MCC. Let’s get into it!

WE'RE JUST GETTING STARTED

It has been 12 months and a couple days since Halo: Reach joined the ranks in MCC. Along with it being added to the collection, it was the first Halo title to make its way to PC and marked the beginning of the Great Journey for all of MCC to come to PC. A lot has happened since that day. Over the past year we aimed to have community participation interwoven with our development and we have loved to see it flourish into such a vibrant result.

See, it wasn’t just our efforts that made this past year possible, you were there each step of the way providing everything from feedback in flights, to talking about so many new features you wanted added in. Over this past year the scope of work was so large that we had to bring more people in on the project to handle the additional load. Internally, that was called our “2nd workstream,” and consisted of additional bug fixes and as well as features like Crossplay, Regional Server Selection, Input Based Matchmaking, and much, much more.

We wanted to stop and look at what not only we have delivered, but what you, the players, have done with us on this journey. This graphic is a look back at some cool data from 2020 as well as a celebration of our collaboration!

To check out the info graphic, get an update on the state of the game with Farns, a look ahead to 2021, and a whole lot more, head over to Halo Waypoint and read the rest of the update today!

If you want to catch up on past editions of the dev update, you can find the one you want here:

Halo 4 is coming to MCC on PC on next week

Master Chief and the gang are coming back to PC in another outing next week. Halo 4 is joining the Master Chief Collection on November 17, so you have just over a week to wait before you can play it on Steam or the Windows Store.

The FPS game features a "fully remastered campaign" alongside Spartan Ops missions - if you've been out of the loop, the latter is a mission-based cooperative mode. As Halo 4 has been in beta since the end of October, we've also had a peep at some of the new features that are coming our way. We're getting crossplay so you can play with pals and strangers on Xbox. Multiplayer is more or less as you remember it, but 343 Industries was testing input-based matchmaking during the beta, which means controller folk will play with other people using a controller, and the same for those with a mouse and keyboard.

You can also expect way more options to build up your forge maps, fresh customisation options for your Spartan, theatre mode, and new challenges - phew!

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Wake Up, John

Halo 4 has arrived, completing Halo: The Master Chief Collection on PC with customizable mouse and keyboard support, 60+ FPS, and other all new PC-specific settings.

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Witness the Master Chief’s triumphant return, as he battles an ancient evil bent on vengeance and annihilation. Go forth, Reclaimer.

Additionally, earn Double XP in multiplayer across MCC between November 16-23!