Yesterday, Microsoft, in honor of the 20th anniversary of the Xbox and the Halo franchise, opened access to the free-play beta of the Halo Infinite multiplayer — three weeks earlier than planned. In the first hours after the release of the game, its online on Steam exceeded 270 thousand people.
According to the SteamDB service, less than an hour after the release, the number of simultaneous players in the multiplayer beta exceeded 100 thousand. After another seven hours, the online peak reached 272,586 people. At the time of writing the news, the online project has decreased by half and amounted to 114,582 people.
Such a start made the Halo Infinite multiplayer the fourth most popular game on Steam over the past day. The title was second only to CS:GO, Dota 2 and PUBG.
According to analyst Daniel Ahmad, Halo Infinite multiplayer has also become the most successful Xbox Game Studios game on Steam in terms of online. For comparison, the maximum number of simultaneous players in Halo: The Master Chief Collection was “only” 161,024, and Forza Horizon 5 had 81,096.
The multiplayer beta has performed well on Twitch as well. At its peak, 246,945 viewers watched the game at the same time.
In general, the game collected mostly positive reviews on Steam — 73% of users liked it. Nevertheless, some gamers scolded the Halo Infinite multiplayer for optimization problems and delays on servers.
Recall that yesterday the Halo Infinite multiplayer beta started not only on PC, but also on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S. What indicators the game has there is still unknown. The release of Halo Infinite itself is still scheduled for December 8.