The long-anticipated release of Halo: The Master Chief Collection on PC arrived yesterday, and it didn’t take long for Halo: Reach to top Steam’s charts. The game has seen a peak of over 160,000 concurrent players in the past 24 hours. Microsoft also confirmed yesterday that Reach has now been added to the Xbox One version of the Master Chief Collection as a premium downloadable update.
But for those playing on PC, it’s the first time they’ll have the opportunity to play through Halo: Reach, and it’s been optimized for the platform with 60 frames-per-second (or greater) with 4K UHD support, and the added option for players to fine-tune their experience with a vast array of options, including variable framerate, the ability to rebind mouse/keyboard controls, texture/shadow quality and more.
Reach is the first game in an incremental release strategy for the PC Master Chief Collection which sees the rest of the Halo series launch in 2020. Halo: Combat Evolved is scheduled as next in line with an “early 2020” release window currently planned.
For those that want to jump into Reach and haven’t already purchased The Master Chief Collection, it’s available as both a standalone purchase and as part of Xbox Game Pass (PC and console). We have a detailed breakdown of how to play Halo: Reach if you need additional help.
While those that already have the collection on Xbox One will need to cough up an additional $9.99 to download Reach as premium DLC.