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343 Industries is hard at work preparing Halo Infinite for its refreshed fall 2021 launch window, with the highly-anticipated Xbox headliner coming for both Xbox platforms and PC. Today, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty announced some new information regarding the experience in a blog post that focuses on the Xbox platform"s commitment to PC, where he revealed that cross-play and cross-progression will be Halo Infinite features at launch.
This means players across PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S will be joining together in multiplayer, very much like in Halo: The Master Chief Collection currently. Meanwhile, cross-progression support allows players to carry over their unlocks, customizations, and other personal effects to another platform without worrying about starting again from scratch.
Support for other PC-specific features such as "ultrawide and super ultrawide screens, triple keybinds, a wide variety of advanced graphics options" was confirmed also, with even more yet to be revealed.
One thing of note is that the blog only specifically mentions multiplayer cross-play, so playing the campaign with friends divided across Xbox and PC may not be a possibility. This is also a shortcoming of the Master Chief Collection. Keep in mind that Halo Infinite"s multiplayer will be a free-to-play phenomenon. Now coupled with cross-play, this should guarantee a healthy playerbase for a long time.
Furthermore, Booty revealed that the PC version of Halo: The Master Chief Collection is now over 10 million players strong, "with the vast majority of them being brand new to the franchise," he added. The impressive number is split between the Microsoft Store, Steam, and Xbox Game Pass for PC services that the title launched on.
Matt Booty also touched on improvements coming to the Microsoft Store in the future, including a higher revenue cut for developers. Find more details here.