The Master Chief Collection gets a custom game browser as early as next week • Eurogamer.net

The long-awaited custom game browser feature hits Halo: The Master Chief Collection as early as next week, developer 343 has announced.

This is the “new way to play with each other in MCC” 343 teased last week.

In a post on Halo Waypoint, 343 said it plans to roll out its next public flight as early as Thursday, 18th February, and a custom game browser is on the list of included features. Here’s how it looks in-game:

Another interesting feature on the list is a new map for Halo 3 from Halo Online.

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.

The game was released as an experiment and was only ever launched in Russia in an alpha test phase. Here’s how it looked:

Microsoft subsequently moved against the popular Halo Online mod ElDewrito, working to scrub any Halo Online assets required to play the game from the internet and insisting the ElDewrito team pause development.

“While we are humbled and inspired to see the amount of passion poured into this project, the fact remains that it’s built upon Microsoft-owned assets that were never lawfully released or authorised for this purpose,” 343 said in a statement issued at the time.

“As this project reverberated across the community, our team took a step back to assess the materials and explore possible avenues, while Microsoft, like any company, has a responsibility to protect its IP, code and trademarks. It’s not optional in other words.”

ElDewrito saw an impressive 8000 concurrent players at one point, signalling huge interest in playing a Halo 3-type experience online on PC. This was all before Microsoft had announced The Master Chief Collection for PC, of course.

Other features that are part of next week’s MCC public flight include field of view slider support for all Xbox One consoles, mouse and keyboard support for consoles, and a change so that the field of view slider will no longer be locked when Xbox Series X and S devices are set to 120hz.