Halo: The Master Chief Collection should have been an easy win for Microsoft; a port of Halo 1-4 on the Xbox One, running at 1080p and 60fps, with remastered visuals for Halo 2 and online multiplayer across all games. What resulted instead was a botched launch full of issues ranging from the multiplayer to the campaigns. But now, four years later, developer 343 is promising to make things right. It's launching a massive update this summer, with plans to overhaul everything from the matchmaking to the game's visuals.
In our video above, we look at how we got here, from the origin of the Master Chief Collection to the big promise of the Master Chief Collection update project. There's still the potential for a great gameplay experience here with massive value in this release, and the opportunity to bring these classic Halo games to this new console generation in the way that they deserve.
Halo: The Master Chief Collection was first announced at E3 2014 to much fanfare. At launch, however, that excitement quickly turned to anger when players discovered matchmaking issues for every game, long wait times for matches, in-game freezes, audio issues, and many other bugs. Improvements were inconsistent and, in many cases, didn't actually address the issues of many players while introducing additional UI bugs.
With the launch of the Xbox One X, 343 announced the Master Chief Collection would be getting an Xbox One X-enhanced update. The developer is calling it an opportunity to improve the collection in many ways, and it's clearly much more than a simple update for 4K resolution and HDR support. For more details on what 343 is promising, watch the video above, and follow GameSpot's full coverage for the latest news when the update releases this summer.