Halo: Reach dated for September 14 @ Gaming Target

Written by John Scalzo on May 24, 2010

News: Are you ready to begin the fight?

The Halo: Reach multiplayer beta ran its course over the weekend, but Microsoft and Bungie want to keep the hype train rolling by announcing that the game will receive a worldwide release on September 14 (except for Japan, which will get it on September 15).

The folks at Bungie are incredibly pleased with how well the beta turned out, saying that over 2.7 million players took part in the test. They played Reach for more than 16 million hours and recorded more than 1.1 billion kills.

"It's exceeded our expectations," Bungie Studios community director Brian Jarrard told the Associated Press. "Our only real perspective going into this was the 'Halo 3' beta test, which had about 800,000 people. We knew there were a couple million copies of 'ODST' out there, but we really didn't have any specific information that let us know what the population might be like."

Bungie doesn't plan to spend the next four months lying down. They've received a ton of feedback from players about Reach's multiplayer component and plan to make this the biggest and bestest version of Halo yet.

"Halo: Reach is the culmination of a decade of Halo, a franchise that has become a global entertainment and pop-culture touchstone,Ф said Phil Spencer, corporate vice president of Microsoft Game Studios at Microsoft Corp. "Just as Halo: Combat Evolved catalyzed the success of the original Xbox to define a decade of entertainment, Halo: Reach will push the boundaries for what's possible in video games and help make 2010 the biggest year in Xbox history."

We'll have more soon.