 With Halo 5 still over a year away, Microsoft has put every consolation prize imaginable into one beautiful stopgap. I'm Ross Miller, and this is 90 seconds on the Verge. This week marks the first major Xbox One event since the console launched last November. One of the biggest announcements was the Master Chief Collection. Available November 11th, the compilation features Halos 1 through 4, all remastered to run at 1080p, 60 frames per second. In addition to the remakes, and this is key, the Master Chief Collection will include access to the Halo 5 multiplayer beta this December. Halo 5, however, isn't due out until next holiday season, 2015. In some ways, it's just house cleaning, since the Xbox One isn't backwards compatible. But in the absence of another top-tier flagship exclusive this holiday season, the Master Chief Collection is also something of a necessity. Sales of the Xbox One have trailed behind Sony's PlayStation 4 since they both launched last November. And last month, Microsoft announced a $400 Xbox One bundle without Kinect, so that it could compete directly on price. But Halo has always been a guaranteed system seller for Microsoft. And it's not just the games themselves, but the whole Halo mythology. That's why Microsoft also announced Halo Nightfall, a live-action weekly series from producer Ridley Scott. Nightfall will tie together the first four Halo games and lay the narrative groundwork for Halo 5. Still no word on that Steven Spielberg Halo series announced last year. For more on E3, check out The Verge. Coming up tomorrow, Oregon Trail is rebooted as a live-action... Wait. Do these stories ever happen? He knows. Shut it down.