When it comes to highly anticipated upcoming Xbox first-party games, Halo Infinite is easily at the top of the list for lots of players. Despite Halo Infinite's delay into 2021, many Xbox fans continue to look forward to the first-person shooter even over the Xbox Series X's confirmed launch window games. In turn, numerous fans have been looking to replay past Halo games on their Xbox Series X in preparation for Halo Infinite's release. So it's going to be disappointing to hear that Halo 5 won't be receiving a dedicated upgrade for Xbox Series X.
Halo 5: Guardians is now five years old, and there are certain to be opportunities to optimize and improve it for the Xbox Series X. Unfortunately, 343 Industries has decided to pass on those opportunities for the time being. In the most recent Halo Waypoint column, 343 confirmed that Halo 5 isn't receiving a dedicated optimization patch of the same scale as it's doing for the Master Chief Collection. No reasoning was provided for 343's decision.
That doesn't mean that Halo 5: Guardians won't see improvements on the Xbox Series X, however. 343 says that Halo 5 will still feature faster loading times and more consistent high-resolution gameplay on the platform. These optimizations will work in a straightforward manner when trying to play Halo 5 on Xbox Series X via standard backward compatibility, seemingly without an update.
The reason that the topic was brought up at all by 343 is due to Halo fans' reaction to news about the Master Chief Collection. Halo: The Master Chief Collection is receiving an update for Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S that optimizes it for next-generation hardware. These optimizations include faster loading, cross-gen play, adjustable FOV, better splitscreen, and 4K 120FPS/1080p 120FPS on Series X and Series S respectively. Fans asked if Halo 5 would also get a big update, leading to the response from 343.
Part of the reason that Halo 5 may not be getting more optimization for Xbox Series X is that the game already recently was updated for Xbox One X. In 2017, Halo 5 was updated to support native 4K resolution on the mid-gen refresh console. That doesn't mean that another update pushing for 120FPS or HDR wouldn't be great, of course, but it might explain why 343 isn't rushing to do another update.
Another good reason for 343 not doing a Halo 5 update is that the studio is really busy. Not only is Halo Infinite still in development, but the studio is also finishing up the development of Halo: The Master Chief Collection on PC. Nevermind the now confirmed optimizations for the Master Chief Collection on Xbox Series X and S. There may just not be enough resources to pivot to Halo 5. Perhaps if fans keep pushing for an update, 343 will reconsider in 2021.
Halo 5: Guardians is available now on Xbox One.