In a little over a week, Halo fans will have a chance to reenter that universe for some more first-person shooting action, but Halo 5 is gonna have some fun in Minecraft first.
Microsoft revealed today that it’s bringing Halo 5 skins to Minecraft: Xbox One Edition and Xbox 360 Edition. On October 23, gamers can use the Minecraft: Halo Edition mashup pack, which Microsoft and Mojang originally released in 2014, to also play as characters from Guardians. This, of course, includes Master Chief, but it also means you can don the outfits of the members of Blue Team and Fireteam Osiris. The Halo 5 update to the mashup pack is free for anyone who already owns it, but the pack is still $4 for anyone buying it for the first time.
But this promotion is an example of Microsoft leveraging two of its biggest gaming properties to maximize excitement and revenue. Minecraft is an enormous success that is on its way to outselling every other game ever released. By combining that success with Halo, the publisher could potentially turn a few Minecraft gamers into Halo players or vice versa.
This cross-promotion also enables Xbox 360 gamers to feel like they can get involved a bit in the Halo 5 hype. The new shooter is only coming to the Xbox One, and while many fans may upgrade specifically to play this new game, others might still wait. If they do, they can drop $4 to play around with the new characters until they’re ready to move on to the current generation of systems.
Here’s a list of the announced characters in the new update:
Blue Team:
- Spartan-117 The Master Chief
- Spartan-104 Fredric
- Spartan-087 Kelly
- Spartan-058 Linda
Fireteam Osiris:
- Spartan Locke
- Spartan Buck
- Spartan Tanaka
- Spartan Vale