As part of its big effort to continue to improve Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Microsoft is inviting community members to test new updates in a “flighting” program. Invitations are now going out for the Halo Community Feedback Program, and specifically the MCC Insider Program.
Plenty of people signed up for the program, apparently, as developer 343 said in a blog post that it has been “thrilled to see so much interest and excitement” for the program. The first wave of invitations were sent out last week. If you signed up already and don’t see your invite, be sure to check your junk and spam folders. If you haven’t signed up, it’s not too late–you can do so here.
This process begins with a survey that should take around 5 minutes to complete. Note that this survey, and the testing program, is subject to Microsoft’s confidentiality agreement, so you can’t talk about it. If you’re invited to join, you will also need to be a member of the Xbox Insider Program to test updates on Xbox One–you can find out how to sign up here. Eventually, 343 will push out updates to Halo: MCC to Insider Program members.
Some other things to bear in mind is that even if you do get into the MCC Insider Program, you might not get access to every update. 343 cautions that “the participation audience will be intentionally small” at the start before expanding to more players later down the track. You should also expect some “hiccups and bumps,” but that is to be expected given that it’s the whole purpose of this.
“We look forward to your participation and feedback but we also ask for your understanding and appropriate expectations as we share work-in-progress builds directly with you,” 343 said.
Back in October, Microsoft spoke frankly about why Halo: MCC struggled and laid out a bold and ambitious plan to address its lingering bugs and improve it on the whole. Because this effort came across as sounding like a serious and time-consuming effort, some believed it would impact the development of the next mainline Halo game. However, 343 later explained that its efforts to improve Halo: MCC won’t impact the development of the next Halo FPS.
While the next Halo FPS has not been officially announced, we definitely know it is coming. And thankfully, it’s going to have split-screen support. As for when Microsoft may finally announce it, that could happen at E3 in June, but we don’t know anything for sure yet.