‘Halo: Master Chief Collection’ Update Skipping Beta? Fundamental Changes Promised
The planned Halo: The Master Chief Collection beta for Xbox One Preview members to test an upcoming patch was unfortunately delayed. Developer 343 Industries gave a bit of a preview of what to expect in the coming update along with changes to the game’s multiplayer playlists, but is a beta test still going to happen?
Community Manager Andy “Bravo” Dudynsky posted a note on Halo Waypoint detailing the upcoming changes to The Master Chief Collection. This update is supposed to be a large one that makes “fundamental changes” to the game’s matchmaking systems. It now sounds like 343 Industries may not go forward with the beta testing for this patch, however.
The latest on Halo: The Master Chief Collection content updates, playlist updates, and Halo 5: Guardians: http://t.co/fvVZUj57mC
— Halo (@Halo) January 31, 2015
“As this update contains the biggest changes to the Matchmaking system yet, we’ve identified that additional time and testing is required, and we are currently evaluating both timing and need for a CU beta with the Xbox One Preview program,” Dudynsky wrote. Dudynsky followed this up on Twitter with reiterating that a beta may not happen.
@RyanPWright Hey Ryan, no updates on this front at this time – we’re evaluating the timing and even need of beta at the moment.
— Andy Dudynsky (@Brav) February 1, 2015
This is hopefully 343 Industries hedging their bets on the possibility that a beta test will not be feasible. However, it’s something that Halo: The Master Chief Collection strongly needs to bring about some form of confidence in a game community whose faith has been degraded by dealing with three months’ worth of issues.
Another update for Halo: The Master Chief Collection that does not solve the game’s matchmaking issues would be another glaring error in a series of glaring errors for the game. It would seem especially galling after asking the Xbox One Preview members who were interested in helping out to fill out a survey.
Developer 343 Industries is targeting a February release for the content update, which may explain the rush to skip external beta testing. There may not be time to roll out the test to Xbox One Preview members, gather the feedback, and make the necessary changes at this point if they are deadset on a February release.
In any event, 343 Industries are targeting the following three areas with the next content update.
- Matchmaking search time
- Match search success
- Lobby / Party Functionality
Additionally, future updates to Halo: The Master Chief Collection will include the release of the Team Snipers playlists along with an objective-only playlist as a featured playlists, and a Rumble playlist that spans all games from the collection.
Microsoft and 343 Industries gave a month of free Xbox LIVE Gold to those who purchased Halo: The Master Chief Collection and are promising the Halo 3: ODST campaign as a free add-on in the future. What state the game will be in from the community perspective, largely remains to be seen.
[Images via Halo Waypoint]
