Microsoft announced that the highly-anticipated Halo: The Master Chief Collection will be released on Nov. 11 in the majority of markets worldwide.
Halo: The Master Chief Collection was supposed to be released on Nov. 11 only in North America, and Nov. 14 in the other parts of the world. Microsoft said that a simultaneous worldwide release is always challenging, but since fans expressed their disappointment in the different release dates, Microsoft moved the official release date worldwide all to Nov. 11, except for Belgium, Japan and France, where the game will be officially released on the 12th, 13th and 14th, respectively.
The delay in release for the three countries is because of public holidays in the affected countries.
Halo: The Master Chief Collection has already gone gold, which represents a very significant milestone. Pre-orders and pre-downloads for the game are currently available.
The game is a collection of four complete Halo games, namely Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo 2, Halo 3 and Halo 4, along with every single multiplayer map for the franchise, including downloadable content for the Xbox and PC, all of which are bound together and enhanced by a brand-new user interface.
Halo 2 has been completely remastered with cinematics by Blur and new audio tracks, similar to the upgrade that the first Halo game received when it was re-released as Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary in 2011.
In addition, all four games included in the compilation received upgrades to resolution, which is now 1080p; frame rate, now at 60 frames per second; and lighting.
All play modes and difficulties for each game are already unlocked from the start, with new achievements to be added for each game.
Microsoft decided to give the gamers the complete Halo experience without sacrificing quality. This resulted, however, in the game having a file size of 45GB, which will further be increased with a 20GB content update that will be issued upon the game's launch. Gamers will be able to begin playing the Campaign modes for the games while the content update is installing, which will add extra features and multiplayer modes.
However, the release of the Spartan Ops co-op feature of Halo 4 will be pushed back to December, as the Halo team continues to make technical improvements to the feature. Upon its release, all ten episodes of Spartan Ops will be made available, with the Halo team planning an event with the Community teams for the launch.
Users that purchase Halo: The Master Chief Collection will also be able to gain access to the beta version of the upcoming Halo 5, which will contain sample gameplay over three modes, seven maps and several weapons.
