Halo On PC: Combat Evolved Anniversary Enters Beta In Early 2020

Halo: The Master Chief Collection will continue its PC rollout after the December release of Halo: Reach, with a beta planned for Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary in the new year. PCGamesN spoke with 343 Industries community manager Brian Jarrard, who confirmed that PC players will be able to get their first taste of this updated version of Halo, which debuted on Xbox 360 back in 2011, after the holidays. "Once Reach comes out next month, after the holiday, we will start to reset, and we’ll start to flight Halo CE," he told the site. "We’re just going to keep going down the road until we fill out the rest of the collection."

The plan, he says, is to update the game to run at 60fps and at 4K, and to "account for all the requirements that PC gamers expect nowadays," like uncapped frame rates and an FOV slider. This has ultimately been a longer process than expected, but 343 is determined to get the game's launch right, especially after the troubled Xbox One launch of The Master Chief Collection.

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary was the first Halo game released by 343 Industries after Bungie stepped away from the franchise. It's a remaster of the original Xbox launch title, and you can switch to the original visuals at the press of a button. This Halo game has, in fact, been released for PC before--Halo: Combat Evolved came to PC in 2003, and we gave that version a 9/10 in our review. It'll be the second game in the Collection released on PC; each game will arrive separately.

The Master Chief Collection also contains Halo 2 Anniversary, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, and Halo 4. All of these games will eventually come to PC.