From a new blog post on Halo Waypoint, 343 Industries explained there will be a 20GB day one patch because they filled all 45GB worth of Blu-ray disc space. The developers realize this is a very large patch but also explained that they didn’t want to cut corners.
Waypoint said:
“That is to say, the sheer size and scope of the content. To recap, Halo: The Master Chief Collection contains four complete Halo games, every multiplayer map ever released (including DLC from console and PC) across each game, a complete remaster of Halo 2 with all-new audio and Blur’s mind-blowing cinematics, and all of this is tied together with (and enhanced by) a revolutionary user interface.
From the start, our philosophy has been to give Halo fans the best possible experience and not compromise the quality or features of the collection. The result is that Halo: The Master Chief Collection will take up almost all of the usable space of a single Blu-ray (45 GB), and we will also issue a content update at launch that is estimated to be 20 GB. You’ll be able to start playing Campaign and more as the content is installing, with some features and multiplayer content being added via the update. Yes, the update is large, but we weren’t about to cut corners to save disc space. This ensures that you are getting every bit of Halo goodness we can fit in. Our work is not done, however, as we continue to tune, tweak and optimize the online experience to ensure a smooth multiplayer launch. This will continue right up until launch day.
One caveat we wanted to share is that Spartan Ops, our episodic co-op experience from Halo 4, will now release in December. In the meantime, we’re making some technical enhancements to that experience to make sure it’s smoother and even better than before. All ten episodes will be available at the same time, so we’re working to make an event out of it with our Community teams.”
This means that this patch will take up approximately 4% of the standard Xbox One 500GB HD space, not including usable space from initial system formatting, how much data from the disc will be written to the hard drive, future patches, and potential DLC (Halo 3: ODST anyone?). Needless to say, the standard 500GB hard drive in Xbox One consoles could be filling up pretty quick.
Halo: The Master Chef Collection has officially gone gold and should be available for pre-order and pre-downloading sometime soon. The full game is scheduled for November 11, 2014 release.
