The team at 343 Industries officially announced today that Halo: The Master Chief Collection has gone gold. To coincide with this announcement, however, the studio also revealed that the title will be receiving a 20GB patch at launch.
It’s not a huge surprise that The Master Chief Collection is a big piece of software, as it does include four full games. However, the sheer size of the title is still staggering when fully laid out. It will not only take up the full 45GBs of available space on the Blu-Ray disc, but the 20GB patch will need to be installed on top of that.
From how the blog post is worded on the Halo Waypoint site, it appears that the 20GB patch will include additional features, as well as multiplayer content. By this line of reasoning, it would appear that the Halo: The Master Chief Collection disc will include the single-player content, which will be playable while the rest of the title is installing. 343 Industries will also continue to tweak and update the multiplayer experience in the lead-up to its launch, as well as post-launch.
While the news of the patch may be met with groans, this is not necessarily a bad thing. It shows that Microsoft and 343 Industries are committed to bringing the full experience of all four Halo games to Xbox One owners, without removing any of the features. Plus, if you are short on space already, you can always just purchase an external hard drive to hold the title.
We will continue to have coverage of Halo: The Master Chief Collection in the lead-up to its release on November 11, so stay tuned.