Master Chief Collection brings full Halo series to PC and Steam

After years of waiting, fans of the Halo series are finally getting what they want as the Master Chief Collection is coming to PC.

PC gamers haven’t received an entry in the Halo franchise since 2007 when Halo 2 was finally released for PC. Online servers for the game were officially shut down in 2013, long after the game was discontinued on Xbox Live in 2010.

The new collection will be available through Steam.

The Master Chief Collection won’t just contain the games originally released either, as the title will add the beloved campaign and more divisive multiplayer of Halo: Reach. On PC, Microsoft announced that the collection would initially release with only Halo: Reach available and move chronologically through the series from there.

The next game released will be Halo: Combat Evolved, followed by Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, and finally Halo 4.

On the Xbox platforms, Reach’s multiplayer will become immediately available with the campaign arriving as paid DLC.

The decision to release the games in a drip feed to PC is likely a smart one, as the release of the original Master Chief Collection for the Xbox platforms in 2014 was riddled with bugs. To its credit, developer 343 Industries put in massive amounts of work on the title in the ensuing years and the game morphed from one of the worst offerings on the Xbox One into one of the best.

With the end of Halo 5 esports in 2018 at the conclusion of DreamHack Atlanta, the Master Chief Collection has become the once-storied franchise’s only remaining competitive offering. Several dominant Halo 5 players moved from the franchise into Black Ops 4, including controller wunderkind Anthony “Shotzzy” Cuevas-Castro and member of the legendary OpTic Gaming and Tox Gaming squads Bradley “Frosty” Bergstrom.

Frosty ended up making the COD Pro League with Enigma6, while Shotzzy has not played in an official category yet as he is only 17.

Since the switch, Halo esports has been played on Halo 3 and has mostly included 2v2 Showdown matches. The series may have a chance of revitalization when the anticipated Halo: Infinite releases.