Halo: The Master Chief Collection has 20GB day-one update, release moved up in UK

343 Industries has announced Halo: The Master Chief Collection has gone gold. That means it's not long out now. The developer also revealed the size of the day-one update and news that the game will receive a simultaneous launch in most regions.

Originally planned for a November 11 release in North America and November 14 in several other territories, The Master Chief Collection will be released on November 11 for the majority of regions instead. This includes the UK and most of Europe.

"There are still a few countries that will see a slight delay due to public holidays," wrote executive producer Dan Ayoub on Halo Waypoint. "In Europe, Belgium will release on November 12 and France will release on November 14 as part of their typical Friday release schedule.

"Our fans in Japan will see a release of November 13. Given the social aspects of the experience, we were really happy to get it as close to a simultaneous worldwide release as possible so that we can all celebrate on November 11 and start playing together."

According Ayoub, the game takes up almost all of the usable space of a single Blu-ray disc, or 45GB if you will, so a content update at launch will be released to include more features. It will be 20GB in size.

Luckily, you will be able to start playing the single-player campaign as the day-one content installs. The update includes the multiplayer portions.

"Yes, the update is large, but we weren’t about to cut corners to save disc space," said Ayoub. "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."

Unfortunately, this also means that Spartan Ops, the episodic co-op experience from Halo 4, will now release in December, but all ten episodes will be available at the same time. So there's that at least.

You can read Ayoub's entire post regarding The Master Chief Collection through the link.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection is now available for digital pre-order on Xbox One, and those who pre-order digitally can start pre-downloading both the game and the update from today.