Got an Xbox One X and looking for new 4K games to play? Well, Master Chief Collection would like to have a word. With your internet connection.
Master Chief Collection is getting added to Microsoft’s Game Pass program later this week, and developers 343 Industries have put together a patch to coincide with the launch. It’s … well, it’s quite big.
This first major update weighs in at a hefty ~73GB and includes a variety of brand new features available to everyone who owns a copy of MCC (or acquires it via Xbox Game Pass).
A major reason for the update is the inclusion of 4K HDR assets, and because the Master Chief Collection is literally four games in one, that’s a double digit download for each game (not to mention anything else that you might want from the Forge for Halo 3 or Halo 4. (Halo ODST‘s campaign doesn’t ship with the whole collection by default – you’ll have to drop $6.65 to get it.)
The patch will also roll out Intelligent Delivery, an Xbox feature that lets developers divide up data for the game so users don’t have to download everything (like grabbing 4K assets when you’re playing on an Xbox One S). In Master Chief Collection, that means players have the choice of what game components they want to download. If you don’t want to touch Halo 2 with a 10-foot flagpole, you don’t have to. Similarly, you can just have the multiplayer for Halo 3 and ignore the campaign entirely.
The small problem with this, as 343 notes, is that you’ll still have to download all of the assets first – or enough until the games are playable. “By default, MCC will attempt to install the entire ~70GB package. However, once the game displays “Ready to Play”, you can launch the game and access the Intelligent Delivery settings to customization your installation specifics.”
Bad luck if you’re not on fibre or good NBN, then. The patch has plenty of bug fixes and improvements, including some frame rate optimisations for those playing the Halo 1/2 co-op campaign. All matchmaking games are now hosted on dedicated Microsoft Azure servers, which is nice, and offline LAN support has finally been added. Load times are better for all Xbox consoles as well, not just the Xbox One X, with Halo 2 Anniversary supposedly getting particular help in this area.
You can find the full list of patch notes here.
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