Microsoft has confirmed that Halo: The Master Chief Collection will be receiving a next-generation upgrade for the Xbox Series X/S. The upgrades include 120 FPS support in Campaign & Multiplayer game modes along with split-screen improvements. These updates are similar to the improvements found in the PC version of the game which has been progressively releasing. The Xbox Series X version will also be receiving 4K support when the upgrade launches on November 17th as a free update for owners of the game. The Halo: The Master Chief Collection will also be available through Xbox Game Pass and contains Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo 2: Anniversary, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach, and Halo 4.

343 Industries today released a new update to its The Master Chief Collection, which includes all FPS Halo Games from Halo Reach through Halo 4 (which, in turn, covered two Xbox console releases in the original Xbox and Xbox 360). The new game, like Halo Reach, Halo: combat Evolved Anniversary, and Halo 2 Anniversary, has been ported to PC with most features one would expect. Performance-wise, the game runs pretty well, with an NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti achieving 150+ FPS on 4K and maximum quality settings - which is to be expected considering the games' original September 2007 release, and the fact that like Halo Reach, it hasn't been remastered.

It's time to finish the fight (again). In the meantime, check after the break for some 4K screenshots of the game, which still holds up pretty well with a simple resolution increase.

Microsoft has revealed the top 20 most popular games played on the Xbox 360 in 2011 based on numbers of unique users logged into Xbox LIVE (Silver and Gold members). Note that this gives a different result to the total playtime for a particular game, which has not been disclosed here. Unsurprisingly, the Call of Duty series dominates the chart, but what is sure to irk CoD detractors, but make fans very happy, is that a massive five of those positions are taken up by CoD - that's 25% of the rankings. Even CoD4: Modern Warfare which was released way back in 2007 sits at a very respectable number 14. However, top games Battlefield 3 and Skyrim did very well nonetheless, sitting at five and six respectively, with only Halo beating them at number 4. Can you guess which CoD game hit the top spot before looking at the chart?

Follwing the teaser trailer "Prepare to drop", which left many gamers guessing as to what this rumoured campaign expansion was about, Microsoft officially announced in its keynote at the Tokyo Game Show today, that it will be called Halo 3 Recon. With only a year to wait, this has been scheduled for release in Fall 2009. The official website featuring a new trailer is now up and can be found here

The prologue, Halo 3 Recon, will cast new recruits in the steel-tipped boots of an ODST recon marine...

Industry sources confirm that Microsoft will be cutting the prices of its popular Xbox 360 gaming console variant, the 20GB Pro by US $50, bringing it down to US $299. A major retailer said that this move would come in before E3 which runs July 15-17 in Los Angeles.

The previous price-cut to this console was during the launch period of Halo 3, where the price cut from $399 ro $349. This slash is more of a ploy to increase the product's competitiveness against the Nintendo Wii while also making it a good deal over the Blu-ray-equipped PlayStation 3 in terms of market share, even so with the holiday season around the corner. While Sony could be pondering its own price cut, the consumer electronics giant did note recently in an annual report that the PlayStation 3 has cost the company $3.3 billion since its late 2006 launch because of a strategic decision to sell the system for less than it costs to make.

The games industry managed record sales of $17.9bn in 2007, up 43% from $12.5bn in 2006. The Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3 all saw their most successful sales figures in December, shifting a total of 1.4m, 1.3m and 800,000 units respectively, meaning that the Xbox 360 has now sold 8.5m units since its launch, the Wii 6.3m and the PS3 2.8m. However, the best selling console over Christmas was actually the Nintendo DS, which achieved sales figures of 2.5m in December. Meanwhile, the most successful game last year was Halo 3, which sold 4.82m copies, with Wii Play in second place on 4.12m and Call of Duty 4 in third on 3.04m.

Available for 800 Microsoft Points exclusively on Xbox LIVE 360 Marketplace, the Halo 3 Heroic Map Pack launches today. It consists of three new multiplayer maps, all customizable in Bungie's in-game editor Forge. This will be the first in a series of downloadable multiplayer maps from Bungie. Initial costs are $10 per pack, with Bungie and Microsoft announcing that they will become free when the next Halo 3 map pack is released this spring.

Microsoft and Bungie have received both good and bad press from Halo 3. On the one hand, they claim record sales and profits. On the other, a sizable portion of the disks were faulty anyways. Thanks to a trivial packaging mistake, most of the "Legendary edition" disks came loose and scratched themselves during shipping. Even when the Halo 3 disks arrived in one piece, there was a certain chance that the game would not even load correctly, which Microsoft was well aware of. This inability to load correctly causes Xbox360s to "crash, freeze or lock up". That's the case that Californian gamer Randy Nunez is making against Microsoft. His class-action lawsuit seeks $5 million USD, and claims that Microsoft should have recalled Halo 3 after they knew about the crashing, freezing, and locking-up that Halo 3 would cause. What could really win this case in favor of Nunez is the fact that quite a few gamers get disk read error messages in the middle of a Halo 3 battle.

Beginning December 11, three new multiplayer maps will be available for players of Bungie's Halo 3 (X360). Titled the Heroic Map Pack, its three maps - Foundry, Rat's Nest, and Standoff - will be downloadable from the online Xbox Live Marketplace for 800 Microsoft Points ($10). Microsoft describes Standoff as "ideal for mid-sized objective and Slayer game types" due to its symmetrical layout and boulder-filled battlefield. Rat's Nest is said to be "an indoor vehicle paradise" best suited for big team battles, whereas Foundry is "the ultimate Forge map" as players can manipulate and replace every object object within it to create their own custom arena.

All original Xbox owners who upgrade to Xbox 360 between November 21 and December 21, 2007, move their existing paid Xbox LIVE account to an Xbox LIVE Gold subscription and then register on this site (currently offline for some reason), will receive a copy of Halo 3. Sounds like a piece of cake, but in real life a special clause says your game will be fulfilled through mail by January 18, 2008.

If you fancy yourself as something of a Halo 3 champion, then this might be just the thing for you. The Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) is running a Halo 3 competition from December 18th to December 22nd this year with a top prize of $1,000,000. The competition is open to all ages and requires no previous tournament experience - the downside is that it requires a fee of $275 to enter. If you're still interested then registration is now open, with the tournament being hosted in Dallas, Texas. For more details check out this site.

Microsoft Corp. today announced revenue of $13.76 billion for the quarter ended September 30, 2007, a 27% increase over the same period of the prior year. Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $5.92 billion, $4.29 billion and $0.45, respectively.

"This fiscal year is off to an outstanding start with the fastest revenue growth of any first quarter since 1999," said Chris Liddell, chief financial officer at Microsoft. "Operating income growth of over 30% also reflects our ability to translate revenue into profits while making strategic investments for the future."

For a while, the Nintendo Wii was truly the king of consoles. It had all sorts of fun games, it was easy to use, and it was cheap as dirt (relatively speaking). However, with the release of such extremely well done games as BioShock and Halo 3 to the Xbox360, many gamers are picking up an Xbox 360 just to play said games. In fact, just last month, Xbox 360 sales effectively doubled, according to recent NPD figures. Overall, Microsoft sold 527,800 Xbox360s, Nintendo sold 501,000 Wiis, and Sony sold 119,400 PS3s.

Most movies that come out in America target a very slim demographic: the 18-34 year old male. However, Hollywood is facing one of the weakest box office performances on record. Instead of looking at the movies in circulation or in production, they are very quick to blame Halo 3, which also targets the 18-34 year old male demographic. "The Heartbreak Kid" is a fine example of this, according to Hollywood. Initial estimates hoped that this movie would make $25 million on the opening weekend, but in reality, it hardly made over $14 million. This is absolutely paltry compared to Halo 3 sales, which were $300 million in the first week. While "The Heartbreak Kid" may have gotten relatively mediocre ratings, Hollywood would much rather blame the extreme success of Halo 3 than look inwards and wonder whether or not people really want to see movies like "The Heartbreak Kid".

With an estimated 4.4 million players, Bungie has an obligation to provide a quality multi-player environment for Halo 3 gamers. Fortunately, that's exactly what they are doing. Bungie recently announced a lot of changes to the way Halo 3 servers match up gamers. The most important change: There will be a lot less "shottie snipers" lying around, to the disappointment of whiny 10 year old brats around the world. The rest of the changes, which are already incorporated into Xbox Live...

• Big Team Battle matches are now 16-player affairs.
• In the Team Slayer playlist, the appearance of Shotty Snipers has been greatly reduced.
• Now, when players veto Shotty Snipers, the game that results from the veto will not be Shotty Snipers.
• In one-sided VIP matches, the attacking team will now see a waypoint for the VIP they are hunting.
• In Lone Wolves, Slayer gametypes will appear more frequently.

Interactive entertainment will never be the same, with the launch of one title that has changed the way the world thinks about video games. Halo 3 has captured the attention of consumers worldwide and has made history as one of the biggest entertainment launches of all time. Microsoft Corp. today announced that Halo 3 has officially become a global phenomenon, garnering more than $300 million in sales in the first week alone. The critically acclaimed Xbox 360 exclusive, which was released worldwide on Tuesday, Sept. 25, is the fastest-selling video game ever and already one of the most successful entertainment properties in history. Record week-one sales come on the heels of the previously announced $170 million in sales in the U.S. within the first 24 hours of the game's release, which marked not just the biggest video game launch, but the biggest entertainment launch in history. The Xbox 360 title beat previous U.S. sales records set by blockbuster openings for entertainment events such as the release of "Spider-Man 3" and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."

While American and European owners of the Limited Edition of Halo 3 are stuck sending their scratched disks back to Microsoft, Australians do not have to worry about any trouble whatsoever. This is because Microsoft sandwiched a piece of foam between the Halo 3 disk and the user guide, effectively keeping the disk from moving. If only this simple yet ingenious idea made its way to the rest of the world, we may not have ever had to worry about Halo 3 copies being scratched.

Microsoft's new 65nm 'Falcon' processor for the Xbox 360 has been rumoured for some time now, but now it seems that Microsoft may finally have begun shipping consoles which use the new CPU. Posters on the official Xbox forums have spotted that the special edition Halo 3 consoles from lot number 734 onwards appear to have the 65nm processor, which will hopefully mean the standard Xbox consoles could start being shipped with it in the near future. With any luck, this will see an end to Microsoft's less than impressive failure rate for Xbox 360 consoles, where heat issues have been a common suspect in the so called "red ring of death". If you've just bought an Xbox 360 and want to find out if your new console is equipped with a Falcon CPU, take a look here.

After numerous problems with scratched disks, Halo 3 owners now have another problem to contend with. According to the Bungie Forums, a number of people are finding that their Xbox 360 throws out a message saying 'Cannot Read Disk' when loading maps, with some users even finding certain points of the game impossible to complete because the console freezes, despite the disk being in perfect condition. As well as this, Halo players are also reporting that they are experiencing a problem which results in them receiving an 'unsafe to respawn' error when trying to resume a Campaign after moving a hard drive between two consoles. Fortunately for Halo 3 fans Bungie is working on a fix for the second issue, although at present there doesn't seem to be any certain solution for the disk-read problem, so it may be best to contact them directly if you are affected by it.

In America, Halo 3 was met with great anticipation, and stores hosting midnight launch events soon found themselves without Halo 3 copies to sell. While Halo 3 did land Microsoft $170 million USD to very first day of launch, most of that money only came from America. In the UK, there were no such lines or hordes of excited gamers. For the first part, in fear of crowds rioting for Halo 3, the UK forbade stores to sell Halo 3 until 8AM local time. And when the stores could sell Halo 3, there wasn't much to see. While Microsoft was popping champagne bottles in celebration of the anticipated "movie-like" sales, the largest line waiting for Halo 3 in the UK topped out at around "a hand-full" of people.

Microsoft Corp.'s third game in the Halo Trilogy - Halo 3, has broken the U.S. sales record for a new video game by garnering an estimated US$170 million in its first 24-hours on sale, the company said late Wednesday. The performance beat the previous record setter, predecessor Halo 2, which earned $125 million within 24-hours after its launch. That's not all. Halo 3 has beaten other records as well. More than 1.7 million copies of Halo 3 were pre-ordered in the U.S., making it the fastest pre-selling game in U.S. history, Microsoft said. The game also drew over a million Xbox Live members to play online in the first 20-hours on offer, making it the biggest day for Xbox Live gaming in history. Halo 3 launched in 37 countries at midnight on Sept. 25 and is available in 17 languages. It retails in three versions: Standard Edition ($59.99), Limited Edition ($69.99) and Legendary Edition ($129.99).

Following widespread reports of scratched Halo 3 Limited Edition discs, Microsoft will be replacing any and all discs damaged as a result of the tin's faulty disc nub. The replacing program covers the Halo 3 Limited Edition Game Disc and Essentials Disc at no charge through 12/31/07. For more details, please check out Microsoft's official disc replacement site.

Some lucky Norwegians got their hands on the NTSC version of Halo 3, which will be released in just two days in the United States (three days in Europe). One Norwegian in particular, who goes by the alias "Assclown" turned Halo 3 into a file you can get off of Bit-torrent. The hacked version, once burned onto a disk properly, would obviously need a modified Xbox 360 to play it. The Halo 3 torrent is 7.3GB broken down into 154 RAR files.

A report coming from NeoGAF gaming forum unveils that the Limited Edition casing of Halo 3 has some design issues, that may lead to a damaged DVD media. Unlike the regular Xbox 360 green game boxes, the Halo 3 Limited Edition ships in a black tin box with center hubs too shallow to adequately hold the DVDs in place. As a result, consumers may find discs that have been freely floating around inside the box that have been scratched up by the very hub that was supposed to keep them in place. So far, reports of scratched discs apply only to the $69.99 Limited Edition, but not to the $59.99 Standard Edition or the $129.99 Legendary Edition.

A friend just opened 3 copies of Halo 3 Limited Edition and with all three copies both disc were loose inside of the package and scratched to death,

explained the original poster of the thread.

Microsoft announced today the availability of its Xbox 360 Halo 3 Special Edition console. The console features an exclusive "Spartan green and gold" finish and comes bundled with a matching Xbox 360 wireless controller, 20GB hard drive, wired headset, Play & Charge Kit, HDMI port, and exclusive Halo 3 Gamer Pics and Theme (available via Xbox LIVE download). The Halo console retails now for $399. The Halo 3 game is not included in the package.