It’s one of those announcements that you think you would never hear about, but it’s happening. Today, Microsoft announced that it’s bringing Halo Master Chief Collection to PC. This is great news, but the more interesting part is that not only is the company using its own store, they are bringing all five games to Steam as well, along with Halo: Reach.
Microsoft revealed the news via Inside Xbox. The main Halo collection includes Halos 1-4 and Halo 3: ODST, as well as including the Halo: Reach game. The games are expected to be released soon with Reach coming out first, surprisingly. If you’re wondering, you can purchase each game individually. According to the developer 343 Industries, this is because they want to “ensure each one is right, while giving players a chance to jump in right away, rather than having to wait for the entire suite of games to be completed.”
Halo has been a huge gem for Microsoft, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it’s remastered collection coming to PC. The biggest surprise here is that the games are coming to Steam. Microsoft has released plenty of games in the past via its own store, but it never released popular FPS titles on Valve’s Steam platform. The biggest reason for Microsoft to do this is simply: reach. Steam has incredible reach to gamers that Microsoft sees potential in, which is why it decided to release on Steam as well.
Steam gaining Halo games is huge. The platform has been struggling for some time because of Epic Games Store. Epic’s platform has been snatching indie games left and right, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise Steam is definitely happy with this gain.
If you’re interested, the Master Chief Collection page is already live on Steam, but is not open for pre-orders just yet. At this time, we don’t know what the pricing will be for the games, but Microsoft is expected to announce that very soon.
