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Halo Wars 2 Adding Crossplay, Master Chief Collection Update in the Works

Halo Wars 2 players across Xbox One and Windows 10 will soon be able to play with each other, while Halo: Master Chief Collection owners should expect an update early next year.

Ozzie Mejia

October 17, 2017 5:40 PM

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While 343 Industries had some new information on the future of Halo 5, it isn't the only Halo game on Xbox One at the moment. There's also Halo Wars 2 and the Halo: Master Chief Collection. Tuesday afternoon, 343 founder Bonnie Ross confirmed that updates for both the Halo RTS and the old-school Halo compilation are in the works.

The next Halo Wars 2 update is set to come before the end of 2017, which will introduce 4K and HDR for Xbox One X users. It'll also offer crossplay, allowing Halo Wars 2 players across both Xbox One and Windows 10 to play with one another.

Ross also apologized for a lack of communication with Halo: Master Chief Collection users, but has confirmed that 343 is currently working to bring the game some visual polish for Xbox One X.

As announced today, work is underway on updates, fixes and Xbox One X enhancements for Halo: The Master Chief Collection – coming in 2018. pic.twitter.com/DlByQ2SkU1

— Halo (@Halo) October 18, 2017

"For us, we have been looking at when the right opportunity is to upgrade MCC," Ross said during a Halo livestream. "When we do it to get the maximum benefit, we do feel that we want to move it to the latest platform updates, so we can take advantage of all the great stuff that the Xbox platform team has done. MCC is six engines. It's not an easy thing to move over and there's a lot of risk, which doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. It just means we should be cautious about when we should do it."

Ross added that the Xbox One X offers up some new opportunities to take the existing Halo portfolio and move it over to the new hardware. The team at 343 is currently working on getting the game's multiple engines ready for what's estimated to be a Spring 2018 update.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?