News | 9/27/2010 at 6:38 PM

Halo: Reach October Update Detailed, Co-Op Matchmaking Dated

Halo: Reach continues its Xbox Live dominance, and Campaign Matchmaking is on the way.  Bungie has posted some incredible numbers, despite what their own "Players Online" counter will tell you.  Anyone who has played Reach lately has probably seen the online players number in the triple digits.  This number might be slightly off, since the online player counter seems to have a half-million point swing.  That's a heckuva swing.  Never mind that now, here comes the co-op news.

Co-op Campaign Matchmaking will be going live on October 15th.  Here's the kicker.  You have to have attained the rank of Corporal to access it.  That means you will need to have earned around 17500 credits.  So you will need to have invested some time with the game before you can just jump in and start betraying people.  I'm looking at you, Rocket fighters.  Here is the list of the upcoming additions and changes.

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Playlist Changes

SWAT Playlist added (SWAT removed from Big Team Battle and Team Slayer)

Team Slayer rebalanced to highlight default Slayer game variants and include new offerings

Classic Slayer removed

Removed “Pro” game variants from the Arena Playlist

Removed Boardwalk from Arena Team Doubles Playlist

Added “Return to Battlefield” volume to Space on Zealot in the Arena Playlist


Game Variants Additions

King of the Hill (multiple Playlists, including Arena*)

Rocket Race

Juggernaut (Rumble Pit Playlist)

*King of the Hill not included in Arena


General Housekeeping

Sudden Death will be added to all Assault game variants, including Invasion

Team Objective will now feature the map Powerhouse

Replacing Drop Shield with Evade for King of the Hill, Territories, and Oddball

Replacing Hologram with Evade in Oddball, Capture the Flag, Assault, and Stockpile

Replacing the Scorpion on Hemorrhage with Wraiths (Hemorrhage Heavies variant, TBD)

And here is Bungie's weekly round up of NNBB numbers, or for the uninitiated, the 'Nana Nana Boo Boo' numbers.

70 Million+ Games have been played

235 Million+ Player-Games have been played

2 Million+ Files have been uploaded to File Shares

5,901 man-years have been spent in online Reach games (sorry, Corporate America!)

20 Million Daily challenges have been completed

709,840 Weekly challenges have been completed

165 Billion Credits have been earned

Keep it up, Bungie.  Because when I see this:

Cell phone journalism at its finest.

It makes me cry a little inside.  Then I realize that math can be hard for computers.  Even when it is just counting.