Gamer's Outpost LLC

by Jessica Conditt

The public beta for an upcoming Halo: The Master Chief Collection content update, designed to tackle ongoing matchmaking and party system issues, is canceled. Matchmaking has been busted in myriad ways since The Master Chief Collection’s launch in November on Xbox One, and Microsoft-owned development studio 343 Industries has issued a handful of patches to address these problems already — this update is expected to be a big one. In January, 343 said that “given the scale of the update,” it would invite Xbox One Preview Program members to test out the patch ahead of launch. And no, that’s not the normal way these things work.

Yesterday, 343 reversed that decision, writing in a new post, “After further evaluation, the team has determined that final testing for the content update will be completed internally, and we will not be conducting a beta test for the next CU.” Additionally, 343 said that preparing the beta would delay the actual patch (and that would be sad for owners of the game, of course).

There’s still no release date for the content update, and this week’s post reiterates that the patch will focus on matchmaking and party issues, plus other items that will be detailed in the future.