Halo: The Master Chief Collection's Season 8 Will Be Its Last

After getting seasons after seasons of content, Halo: The Master Chief Collection's seasonal structure will come to an end in the next couple of months. Developer 343 Industries announced this week that it plans to end the seasonal rollout after Season 8 releases at some point during Fall 2021. More content will come to Halo: The Master Chief Collection since the developers aren't done working on it yet, but a focus will instead be shifted to the seasonal releases planned for Halo Infinite.

The plans for The Master Chief Collection's final official season were detailed in the latest Halo Waypoint blog post from 343 Industries. The team referenced the confirmed release date of Halo Infinite and said that because of some overlapping areas shared between the Master Chief Collection and Halo Infinite teams, the Season 8 release will be the "last official MCC update of this calendar year."

Continuing that thought, 343 Industries said it has more work to do on the collection, but that work won't come in the form of season. Instead, it'll happen via smaller updates that'll deliver new content, stability improvements, and more.

"We've agreed on two key points: One, we have more MCC work to do and support will continue; and two, as a studio it's not ideal to run and continue shipping seasonal updates for two different multiplayer titles concurrently," 343 Industries said in the blog post. "So, while we very much have more updates coming – including more content, fixes, and features – the manner in which they are delivered is expected to shift. 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."

While Halo Infinite will indeed launch with a multiplayer and solo campaign mode included, it's taking a page from the book of Call of Duty and other major releases by making the multiplayer component free-to-play. Given how that's the first time that sort of move has been made in a Halo game, it makes sense then that 343 Industries overall would look to focus more efforts on Halo Infinite's multiplayer mode seeing how it'll be accessible to anyone.

The blog's discussion of The Master Chief Collection closed by assuring players that more details on the future of the games will be shared next year.

"We're working through more detailed plans for the future of MCC and look forward to sharing more info early next year," the post said. "In the meantime, we're focused on finalizing Season 8 to ensure we give you an amazing release to cap off the year for MCC."

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