The studio is aware of the feedback from fans

Sep 18, 2014 19:31 GMT  ·  By

343 Industries, the studio currently in charge of the Halo franchise for Microsoft, confirms that it's now thinking about remastering both Halo: Reach and Halo 3: ODST for the Xbox One, after it's done with The Master Chief Collection or Halo 5: Guardians.

The Halo franchise is arguably one of Microsoft's biggest intellectual properties, selling millions of copies across the Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One platforms, via major installments like Halo 4, not to mention smaller ones like Halo: Spartan Assault.

The games have a loyal fan base, and both Microsoft and 343 want to delight its members with the upcoming Halo: The Master Chief Collection for the Xbox One, which includes Halo 1, 2, 3, and 4, all remastered to run on the new home console.

The lack of Reach and ODST has been a hot topic

While the initial announcement of the special series of titles for the Xbox One was met with great anticipation, fans of the spinoff Halo titles, such as Halo 3: ODST or Halo: Reach, were a bit upset to see that those experiences wouldn't be made available for the Xbox One anytime soon.

According to producer Dan Ayoub from 343 Industries, there were multiple reasons why those two games were skipped, starting with the fact that they didn't focus on Master Chief, the franchise's main protagonist, as well as due to limitations with the disc size.

"With Halo 5 coming out we really wanted to focus on those Master Chief-centric games," Ayoub told Videogamer. "That was part of it. Quite honestly, the other part of it was just disc space. We're squeezing everything we can out of the available space for this thing."

343 is now thinking at the remastered treatment due to fan feedback

Ayoub admits that initially there were no plans to remaster Halo: Reach and Halo 3: ODST for the Xbox One, but now, due to the feedback from fans, the whole studio is trying to come up with solutions to facilitate this.

"What I can tell you is probably the biggest question we get from people is, what about ODST and Reach. What I can say is it's certainly not in our development timeline or planning right now [but] we've heard that question so much that it has seeped into our collective subconscious. I think enough people have asked about it that we are thinking about it."

As such, while it seems that Halo: The Master Chief Collection' launch in November and Halo 5: Guardians' in fall of 2015 will be the next entries in the series, you can expect remastered versions of Reach and ODST to appear at some point in time.