Halo is getting PC and Xbox matchmaking this year
Put a ring on it
First up, I’m going to incept the Halo theme song into your brain: Oohwawawawahwahwawha...
There, that should do it. Now we have the scene properly set, I’m excited to tell you that the Halo: The Master Chief Collection isn’t going to settle on just bringing the Halo series back to the PC. There are plans afoot that will let Xbox One and PC gamers fight together in multiplayer. Everything is connected, people.
The information was almost hidden away in a recent dev blogpost, where a small pile of features were promised before the year’s end. They include:
- Crossplay
- Input Based Matchmaking
- M&K Support for Xbox
If you’re paying attention, it shows how they’ll plan to make this fair on the joypadites. “Input based matchmaking” in conjunction with crossplay means they’ll be able to separate pad players from mouse and keyboard users, which means you can play together if you decide to use a pad on the PC. Buttttt they’re adding in M&K support to the Xbox One edition. What a twist! Whatever's prompted this blatant disregard for their console's basic form and function, I hope it continues. It's making me forgive them for the long, dark winter of Games for Windows - Live.
It's planned for 2020, so they have about four months left. It’s an ambitious timescale, but it’s one I think they can pull off. Think about it: in the past seven months we’ve had three full Halo games released on the PC, and the next one, Halo 3: ODST, is already in testing. At this rate, I think they’re going to press a button and all the remastered Halo games will reconfigure into Halo Infinite.