The next Halo game is being built from the ground up to support PC players.

Halo Infinite was revealed at E3 this year, alongside news that - not counting a severely stripped-back Halo 5 - it would be the first mainline title in Microsoft’s flagship series to come to PC since Halo 2 on Windows Vista.

In an official 343 Studios stream on Mixer (skip to 1:02:33), technical director David Berger confirmed that this didn’t mean a simple port from the console edition. Halo Infinite’s game engine, Slipstream, is built with PC hardware in mind just as much as the various Xboxes.

“We take the PC as a full first-class citizen,” said Berger. “The PC audience expects different things than a more curated console experience. It definitely goes into our philosophy of making sure we can allow scalability of things on the different hardware of the PC.”

This means the team is developing an engine that can be customised and scaled based on the endless varieties of PC hardware.

It comes as part of Microsoft’s larger efforts to win back the PC audience it admits to having failed in the past. Additionally, Xbox head Phil Spencer has intentions to fix the maligned Windows Store and improve the company’s PC gaming presence.

But while Halo Infinite is coming to PC, don’t expect it to feature pay-once-play-everywhere Xbox Play Anywhere support.