The Xbox 20th Anniversary Broadcast was a real bombshell as 343 Industries announced that the Halo Infinite Multiplayer beta will be available to everyone, with the beta including all multiplayer modes, even full access to the Season One Battle Pass updates. The multiplayer itself is due out on December 8th and will still be free-to-play, a first for the Halo franchise.
Halo Infinite is looking pretty strong up to this point and is poised to be one of the biggest launches in the history of the series, as evidenced by the sheer amount of concurrent players on Steam. According to VGC, the Halo Infinite Multiplayer beta was able to reach over 270,000 concurrent players on Steam just hours after launch, according to SteamDB.
Halo Infinite Multiplayer Beta Covers Over 270,000 Active Players on Steam
The multiplayer beta is not only available on Steam, as players can download the game through the Microsoft Store or Xbox Game Pass on PC, which means the total number of players on PC should be higher. Halo Infinite is one of the biggest releases of the year, and with the success that Forza Horizon 5 has been able to bring to Xbox Game Studios, expectations for this game are high.
With numbers like this early in the pre-launch phase, all signs are hoping for a positive response to the launch, at least in terms of sales. Xbox Game Pass will certainly help increase the number of active players at launch, but it will be interesting to see how many of those stay for longer. At the moment, the number of active players on Steam is hovering around 150,000, which is still impressive.
The launch of the multiplayer beta did not go smoothly, with many players reporting frequent crashes, blue screens, and a host of other issues. Luckily, the developers were able to fix these issues relatively quickly, giving players the chance to experience the game at its best.