This week, Halo developer 343 began testing Halo: The Master Chief Collection Season 8 content for Halo 3 and Reach, giving players their first taste of new "alternate universe" armour skins - and it's fair to say they've sparked quite the debate within the community.

Season 8 of MCC is called Mythic and showcases Halo "in a deliberately divergent way", 343 franchise and narrative writer at 343, Jeff Easterling, said in a post on Halo Waypoint.

He's not kidding. Each of the new armour sets for use in Halo 3 multiplayer within MCC is focused on "reimagining the core Mjolnir armour as alternate universe amalgams based on legendary ancient warriors", including Greek and Norse mythology. We're playing as Spartans, after all!

Read more

343 has outlined a number of new features coming to Halo: The Master Chief Collection.

Chief among them is a new map for Halo 3 called Icebox, which is a remake of the classic Halo 2 map, Turf.

Icebox was originally a multiplayer map from the cancelled Halo Online (343 has added Halo Online maps to Halo 3 before). Unlike the original, which is set in Mombasa, Icebox is set in the Russian city of Tyumen.

Read more

13 years after it came out, Halo 3 has a new map.

Season six of Halo: The Master Chief Collection launched last night, and it brought with it Waterfall, a Halo Online map now playable in custom games for Halo 3. Waterfall is a snow and ice-themed map with a silenced SMG and Brute plasma rifle placed natively on the map. The trailer below shows it off:

Halo Online was the free-to-play PC Halo game based on Halo 3 multiplayer and developed by Saber Interactive that Microsoft pulled offline before it got a full release.

Read more

14 years after it came out, Halo 3 is getting back bling.

Taking a page out of the Fortnite playbook, Halo 3 is getting a raft of new customisation options, including what are called back accessories.

These new customisation options, which do not affect gameplay, are live now in the Halo: The Master Chief Collection flight (the version of the game where upcoming features are tested).

Read more

Bungie's Halo website goes dark permanently in February, scattering its many player stats to the wind.

In a post on Bungie.net, the developer said halo.bungie.net goes offline permanently on 9th February.

Almost nine years ago, stats and files from Bungie's Halo games stopped getting updated on Bungie.net. Since then, all stats, files and other data from Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach lived on at halo.bungie.net.

Read more

343 has said crossplay, input-based matchmaking and custom game browser will all release for Halo: The Master Chief Collection in 2020.

In a blog post on Halo Waypoint, the developer provided a snapshot of the features the development team is working on and committed to for 2020. Without providing specific dates, 343 confirmed a number of features players have been calling for.

Perhaps the highlight is crossplay between Xbox One and PC. 343 said crossplay, input-based matchmaking and server region selection will all release together.

Read more

Microsoft is having a good time on Steam right now, with a number of its game in the top-sellers list.

Obsidian's Grounded is in fact the top-selling game on Steam's platform - at the time of this article's publication. Perhaps that isn't surprising given the game has seen over one million players in the first 48 hours of release.

The second top-selling game on Steam is another Microsoft game - this one not yet out. Microsoft Flight Simulator, which Martin is currently into in a very big way, is currently flying high on Steam.

Read more