Halo: Reach had a stunning debut on Steam with record concurrent players

The Steam launch of Halo: Reach has proven there's a big appetite for Bungie's classics on PC.

Halo: Reach is the first game from The Master Chief Collection to see a release on PC. It's also the first ever Halo to launch on Steam, so all eyes were on Reach to determine if Microsoft made the right call in investing in these ports.

On day one, over 136,000 players jumped in just on Steam. This peak concurrent was enough to land it in Steam's top five, and Reach even broke this record the next day with with a little over 161,000 concurrent players on Steam.

At the time of writing, the game has over 45,000 players in-game. Halo: The Master Chief Collection has, of course, itself been topping Steam's charts for most of this week.

It's clear the competitive price of $10 for Reach or $40 for the full package, and the anticipation of the release itself, all contributed to this success. The game's availability on Xbox Game Pass has seemingly not taken away from its sales on Steam, which is another win for Microsoft.

This is in stark contrast to Gears 5, which managed a measly 10,000 peak concurrent. Gears 5 is obviously a much more expensive game, and Gears of War has less of a legacy on PC compared to Halo, but it was Microsoft's first day-and-date Steam release.

The Halo: Reach PC port is not perfect, sadly, with clear problems in audio compression and mouse feel. Many of the reported issues have been known by 343 and its co-developers during the beta, so it's disappointing to see them persist. The good news is that work continues behind the scenes to address them.