Halo 3 for PC will kick off its public testing starting the latter half of June this year.
Halo publisher 343 Industries confirmed this over the weekend, giving a “completely paired down” build into partners’ hands by next week. Halo 3 will undergo the traditional Microsoft “flight”, a common MS dev speak for beta testing.
Even then, flighting is more rigorous than the average public beta other most devs do. Microsoft flights make up of different stages that allow for a rigorous debugging and testing with the player base.
343 Industries busy with other Halo titles
343 Industries has become busy over the past few weeks. Together with their third mainline Halo, the studio is also busy with other Halo spinoffs. Predictions of Halo: Infinite’s release is going around the mill, with Reddit leaks showing it’s close.
Last week, games under the Halo: Master Chief Collection were having their issues too. Halo 2: Anniversary is still rife with bugs and issues and players are getting rowdy.
“Next week, we aim to get the completely paired down flight build into our partners hands, which is much sooner than usual,” said the post from Halo community manager Tyler Davis. “Our goal is to have the Halo 3 public flight kicked off in the first half of June. We can’t wait to get the community involved!”
If fans want to get their hands on the game during the public beta, they need to join the Halo Insider program first. The Halo Insider program allows participants to join public flights not only for the upcoming Halo but all Halo titles in the future.
Halo “flights” are common during public testing
Flights and flighting is a common theme across Microsoft apps and games. These are ways that the company allows a select group of the public to test and provide feedback.
The style of flighting comes from how cloud computing undergoes testing. Every testing has stages or “rings” of test flights. Unlike traditional beta testing that lasts an extended period, flighting has different levels.
At the start, devs will start with a specific beta build. This build will receive gameplay data from participants. Once feedback is complete, this will go on top of the current build, and the process repeats until devs get satisfactory results.
Halo 3 passed Ring 1 and 2 from late March until early April. If past titles are the basis, fans can get the new Halo a little more than a month after public testing finishes.
Halo 3 and the Master Chief Collection will have 4K UHD support and HDR. It will also receive optimizations for keyboard and mouse support.
Images courtesy of 343 Industries/Youtube Screenshots