343 Industries, the developers of Halo, have announced that the upcoming Season 8 of the Halo: Master Chief Collection will be the last seasonal content update for the game and that in the future it’s pivoting to smaller updates. Season 8 will roll out later this fall, and after that, the team will keep supporting the MCC in smaller ways while shifting the main focus to Halo: Infinite.
Season 8 will contain “more unique customization content, quality of life updates, fixes, and brand-new features… there’s some really great feature additions on the docket as well including more games coming to the Custom Game Browser, and more support for modders.” The Halo Waypoint update says, “While the MCC and Halo Infinite teams are generally separate entities, we do have overlap when it comes to shared areas like services, support, community, and more.”
This does not mean that 343 is done updating the MCC. Says the team on Waypoint: “Starting next year, we’re targeting pivoting away from our current seasonal model and cadence to instead focus on smaller MCC updates that can land when they’re ready based on development status and studio roadmap alignment. These updates will continue to be free and will include the unreleased features and content from this year – as well as a continued effort to improve stability and tackle legacy fixes where possible.”
The main reason they’re changing up the content strategy, according to the Halo Waypoint update, is that the team doesn’t want to simultaneously be supporting multiplayer for both the MCC and the upcoming Halo Infinite, which is understandable. I imagine that a number of players who fell off of the MCC will be jumping on with Infinite, especially since it’ll have free multiplayer in addition to its paid campaign. I certainly will be, and I especially want to see how the game looks on Xbox Series X.