Despite a lack of any announcements regarding a new title in the series, this is a big week for Halo fans. Halo 5: Guardians is officially getting the “true 4K” treatment, and tons of Halo is heading to Xbox One via backward compatibility.
Microsoft has confirmed that Halo 5: Guardians will receive an update to support true 4K on Xbox One X. Developer 343 Industries was deeply committed to hitting a locked 60 fps frame rate when the game released in 2015, so it’s safe to assume that’ll hold true here, as well. While a new Halo title would be ideal, Halo 5 will likely be one of the showcase titles for how titles that were originally built for Xbox One can be optimized for Xbox One X.
More Halo than you can shake a stick at
On the backwards compatibility side of things, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Halo 4, and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary are all coming to Xbox One later this year. Halo: Reach and Halo Wars are already available via backwards compatibility. Halo 2: Anniversary, I believe, sits as the only title left in Microsoft’s Halo: The Master Chief Collection that is available only as part of that collection. Multiplayer is core to the Halo experience, and Microsoft is looking to tear down any barriers to the online community that it can. Once these titles are available, the company says that every Xbox 360 Halo add-on map pack will be made available for free.
There might not be a new Halo coming this year, but there’s a metric buttload of Master Chief on the way this fall, all the same.
