The long-awaited arrival of Halo: The Master Chief Collection on PC is drawing ever-nearer, and 343 has announced that the collection’s first closed test, starting with Halo Reach, will begin soon. How soon? This week. That’s soon, yeah? Yeah.
343 Industries was initially aiming to get Reach out for testing back in April. The studio then announced they intended to push it to earlier this month, just after E3, in favour of a little extra time for internal tweaking and polishing.
Obviously, it didn’t materialise after E3, as the team has been extra cautious about making sure it’s absolute ready to go out, so it looks like it’ll be the last week of June instead.
Unfortunately, only a small number of registered Halo Insiders will be able to get their hands on this first look at Reach on PC, as 343 want to make certain that everything goes as smoothly as possible and they can get the best possible feedback.
343’s John Junyszek explained:
We’re starting more modestly because we’ve got quite a few levers to pull and we want to ensure our delivery pipeline runs smoothly, our communications are clear, and that participants can properly provide their feedback on the build.
This doesn’t mean that a final build of Reach for PC is still light-years from being ready, however – quite the opposite, in fact. 343 apparently has a pretty strong build right now, but Junyszek said that they simply want to take their time to “ensure they’re sending out a quality flight” to Halo Insiders
While not everyone will be able to join in on the first test, 343 will still be updating everybody with the build’s progress as they go. While it’s probably too late to sign up to the Halo Insider program to get access to closed test this time, you can still register here to learn of opportunities to test all of the games in The Master Chief Collection as and when they happen.
343 announced that The Master Chief Collection would be coming to PC back in March, much to the excitement of fans everywhere. Reach will be the first game to arrive on PC, followed by Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3, the campaign from ODST, and Halo 4.
Understandably, Reach is the game people are currently most excited to play again. Veteran Halo players are even looking into ways they can reunite and play with their old Xbox 360 buddies from back in the day, which is just lovely.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.