March 11, 2019 Some cryptic pizza-themed exchanges make it look like Halo: The Master Chief Collection for PC will be announced very soon.
Halo: The Master Chief Collection’s PC release could be announced very soon, if some puzzling posts from developer 343 Industries’ community director are anything to go by. Brian Jarrard has been busy posting to both Reddit and Twitter, suggesting an announcement could be imminent.
Last week, a fan of the series posted on the Halo subreddit (via PCGamer) saying that “I will buy the first 343 employee that comments on this pizza if MCC for PC gets announced during the special announcement this month.” Jarrard was particularly quick to respond, asking “what kind of pizza are we talking about?”
Then, early this morning, he made an entirely separate post on Twitter, composed of a lone pizza emoji (although in a follow-up tweet, he was content to play pretty dumb). It’s all extremely cryptic, but it’s worth noting that there’s an Inside Xbox Stream happening later tonight.
Last week, Brad Sams, a tech journalist whose track record with Microsoft leaks has been notable, said “Microsoft’s open secret is that they’ve been working on the Master Chief Collection for the PC, and I’m hearing that that’s getting close to release.”
Yesterday, even more information came to light, although it wasn’t exactly clear cut. The first snippet came via Sams once again, who linked to an apparent piece of cover art for the game posted on resetera. The artwork features both Xbox One and Windows 10 logos, and showed up on Xbox servers, but Sams points out that it’s possible to upload images to Xbox, and that the artwork has been posted to Twitter by the Xbox team.
Elsewhere, wccftech points out that a PC version of the game has appeared as a Surface Hub listing. The Hub isn’t a gaming platform by any means, so it’s likely that this is a bit of a mistake, but given that the Surface runs on Windows 10, its appearance is another potential clue.
Sams posits E3 as a likely site for an announcement, and even speculates that it could launch during the show – though the latter two points are, again, purely speculative.The proper takeaway is that it’s very likely Master Chief Collection is coming to PC, and it’s coming soon. It’ll be a nice change to finally get the majority of the series on PC in modern form – the last PC release was Halo 2, and even that was marred by Microsoft’s old Games for Windows Live scheme. Thankfully, the Halo Infinite release date will see the game launch on the same day for console and PC.
The original information comes via Sams’ video below, as noted by Nibel on Twitter.
Halo Infinite is set to be a “spiritual reboot” for the series, and we’ll see more of it – or at least its engine – at E3. Sams notes that Microsoft could’ve shown gameplay last year, but it apparently looks so good that the company decided it was better not to show it against current-gen titles.
Related: Check out the best old games on PC
It’s looking increasingly likely that Microsoft’s big E3 focus will be on Game Pass and its cloud streaming plans, and the bigger part of the video above is a plan to release a new, discless Xbox One at a cheap price point in May. Our digital, streaming future is rolling in fast.