While Halo fans might be disappointed that the series isn’t receiving a new FPS installment in 2017, 343 Industries has offered up some good news as part of its Halo Summer Celebration. Before the end of the year, four games from the franchise will be added to the Xbox One backward compatibility list.
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, and Halo 4 are all set to be supported over the coming months, according to a blog post on Halo Waypoint. Physical Xbox 360 versions of each game will become compatible with the Xbox One, and digital copies will be added to the Xbox Store.
Of course, all these titles are already playable on the Xbox One via the Master Chief Collection, which launched alongside the hardware back in 2014. Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo 3, and Halo 4 were all a part of the package from the start, while ODST was added at a later date as DLC.
That being said, the Master Chief Collection was marred by technical issues, many of which went unfixed despite several patches issued by 343 Industries. Many fans of the series might prefer to have access to the original versions of each game in order to avoid any inconsistencies.
The backward-compatible versions of these games also have the capacity to support LAN parties, for players who want to relive the days of Halo multiplayer before Xbox Live. Any configuration of Xbox One and Xbox 360 consoles can be networked together to support large parties of players.
What’s more, 343 Industries plans to make every DLC map pack for each of the four games available for free via the Xbox Store. It’s clear that the studio is making every effort to reignite the series’ multiplayer community — which might suggest we’re likely to see our first glimpse of Halo 6 over the coming months ahead of a 2018 release.
No timeline has been given on when these games will be added to the backward-compatibility list, other than the general window of before the end of 2017. 343 Industries will be on hand at the RTX Austin 2017 convention to show off Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST running on the Xbox One.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.