Halo World Championship Prize Pool Increases by $500,000

A few days ago, 343 gave us an update with a some new information on the Halo World Championship (HWC) coming this winter.

Qualification

On their forum, 343 explained some details for the qualification process for the HWC. There will be a total of 16 teams that will qualify to compete in the Halo World Championship which is expected to be in March 2016. The 16 teams that can qualify will be split from different global regions.

• The top 8 teams from North America
• The top 4 teams from Europe, Middle East, and Africa
• The top 2 teams from Australia and New Zealand
• The top team from South America
• The top team from Asia

It is unclear as to how 343 will conduct these qualification tournaments, but it is expected that they will be played online with the help of Halo’s dedicated servers.

Prize Pool

The Halo World Championship prize pool originally started at $1,000,000 but 343 announced that the prize pool has increased by an additional $500,000 just one week after the release of Halo 5. This massive increase was caused by mass purchasing of REQ packs in Halo 5. For those who don’t know what a REQ pack is, it’s 343’s new micro-transaction system for Halo 5 which offers players an opportunity to get cool weapon skins, power-ups, armor parts, and emblems. REQ packs can be earned by ranking up in matchmaking or purchased with Xbox currency. 

This goes to show how beneficial the micro-transaction system has been for the Halo community. With a prize pool increase this massive so early in the game, one can only imagine how large the prize pool will be this March.