Halo Atlas Available Saturday For All Platforms

Halo Atlas is something close to brilliant. A way to push the Xbox love with an integrated tie-in and it almost mocks the Wii U concept by putting it in your hands now.

ATLAS, or Assisted Tactical Assault System, is a companion experience that provides near-real-time player data and tactical guidance for your Halo: Reach and Halo: Anniversary Multiplayer gameplay. This brand new strategy app will begin to become available on December 10 as part of Halo Waypoint on Windows Phone 7, iOS, and Android devices.
We have partnered with Brady Games to bring you detailed Multiplayer and Firefight maps for Halo: Reach. That includes the Noble, Defiant and just released Anniversary Map Pack! Along with the benefit of being able to study the maps while on the go, ATLAS also features:
• Weapon and vehicle spawn locations for Matchmaking and Firefight games.
• Health pack locations.
• Near-real-time locations for weapons and vehicles during Custom Multiplayer games.
• Your location and that of your team members displayed on the map.
• ‘Follow me’ mode to track your movement.
• Dynamic player list, including current score for the teams and each player and equipped weapon for you and your teammates.

Each map lets you pan around, zoom in and out, and view weapon, vehicle and health pack spawns and information. You can even tap on each icon on the map to get specifics about the type of weapon or vehicle. This is just the static data you can see for each map, though. ATLAS actually gives you much more than that….
In addition to map viewing, we are also including a cutting-edge experimental feature where we show near-real-time information. That means when you are playing a Matchmaking Multiplayer Halo: Reach game on Xbox LIVE, ATLAS shows your location on the map and updates dynamically as you move around. Firefight maps don’t support near-real-time data in this release, but you can still check the weapon, vehicle and health map locations for those maps.

Along with weapon, vehicle, and health pack locations, ATLAS will also show the location of your teammates in team games. You will get visual indicators when your teammates are engaged in combat and when they are killed, and even when they positioning themselves to strike.
With Matchmaking games, ATLAS respects the ranked nature of gameplay by only showing weapon and vehicle spawn locations. But with Custom Multiplayer games, ATLAS takes a more no-holds-bared approach by showing the near-real-time location of power weapons and vehicles on the map. So, if someone picks up a Rocket Launcher and later drops it, you will see the new location for that particular weapon. You will also be able to see vehicles moving around along with you or your teammates!

At the same time Halo Waypoint is coming to iOS and Android for free. ATLAS will initially only be available in English. It’s free for Windows Phones and $5 for Android and iOS. Waypoint is free across the board.

You can read more here but it’s scheduled for a 12-10 release.