343 says Halo: The Master Chief Collection is coming to ‘a new place’

Developer teases ‘new way to play’ in a future update planned for the coming weeks

This article was updated at 15:47 GMT with additional context.

343 Industries has said it will offer a ‘new way to play’ Halo: The Master Chief Collection via an upcoming update.

In its latest weekly development update, the Xbox studio said that fans should expect “maybe a new place and way to play” when its next public flight test arrives later this month or early next month.

The Master Chief Collection is already available on Xbox consoles, Steam and Xbox Game Pass. One potential new destination for the six-game collection is the Epic Games Store.

343 could also be referring to the planned addition of a custom games browser for PC, which it previously said would be added early this year.

Head of Xbox Phil Spencer has previously said he would like to “make our Xbox Games Studios PC games available in multiple stores, including our own Microsoft Store on Windows, at their launch. We believe you should have choice in where you buy your PC games.”

Microsoft has held a close relationship with the Fortnite maker since publishing (and later acquiring) its Gears of War series. Recently, Microsoft supported Epic in its legal battle with Apple over App Store fees.

The Epic Games Store recently reported a surge in users in its 2020 report to 160m – an increase of nearly 50% compared to the previous year.

In a new report summarising its 2020 performance, Epic says its daily active users were up 192% to 31.3m, with a peak of 13 million concurrent players (up from 7M in 2019). Monthly active users in December rose from 32 million in 2019 to 56 million.

In comparison, rival Steam saw a record 120 million monthly users in 2020, daily active users of 62 million, and peak concurrent users hit 24.8 million. Both platforms would have benefitted from a boost in games activity due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Last month 343 Industries said it was committed to providing “at least” monthly updates on the progress of Halo Infinite.

In December the Xbox studio officially pushed Infinite’s release back to fall/autumn 2021 and shared new details via Joseph Staten, the Bungie veteran who took control of Infinite’s campaign development following its much-criticised reveal this summer.

It was the first high-level update on the former Xbox Series X/S launch game since the summer. However, responding to fans on Reddit in January, community manager Brian Jarrard insisted the studio was engaging with fans as much as it could.

“Considering we went 12-month stretches of total darkness and our last update was on December 8, I don’t think there’s any cause to worry,” he wrote.

“We also confirmed our Fall release window in that update, so now it’s clear we have some runway ahead of us and some time to go. That said, we’re committed to at least monthly high level updates and the next ‘Inside Infinite’ is coming out this week!”