Every Halo FPS from now on will have split-screen.

[Jtbrig7390]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...e-split-screen

Every first-person shooter Halo game from now on will have split-screen, developer 343 has said.

Halo 5 launched without split-screen, much to the annoyance of long-term fans of the series. At the time, then 343 chief Josh Holmes said the decision to remove split-screen from Halo 5 "was one of the most difficult ones we've ever had to make as a studio".

"We know that for many of our fans, Halo has meant playing together with friends in the same room," he said. "We all have great memories of past Halo split-screen multiplayer matches.

"To move Halo's gameplay forward and deliver a true next-gen experience, tough choices had to be made. Our decision was driven by a desire for scale, fidelity and focus to ensure that we would deliver the best quality experience possible.

"With Halo 5 we are delivering massive scale environments, improved AI behaviour, increased visual and gameplay fidelity... something that truly takes advantage of a new platform. Many of our ambitious goals for Halo 5 would be compromised in a split-screen setting and the time spent optimising and addressing split-screen-specific issues would take focus from building other parts of the game.

"Game development is a balancing act of resources, time and technology, and in this case we made the tough decision to sacrifice something that's been near and dear to us all."

Now, in a talk at the DICE conference, 343 boss Bonnie Ross confirmed that the studio had learnt from its mistake.

Here's the quote, which you can watch in the Twitter video below:

"We've also had a lot of learnings along the way. When we fell down with multiplayer launch of MCC, or when we didn't put split-screen in with Halo 5, it was incredibly painful for the community and for us. It erodes trust with the community, as the community is a part of our world-building.

"A lot of learnings from that. I would say, for any FPS going out will have always have split-screen in going forward."

Ross' comments suggest the inevitable - but so far unconfirmed - Halo 6 will have split-screen, which is sure to delight some fans of the series. Halo has a wonderful history with local multiplayer, from LAN tournaments with Combat Evolved to taking on the campaign with a couch co-op friend in Halo 2. I spent countless hours soldiering through the campaigns of Bungie's Halo games split-screen with my brother on the hardest difficulty, and a lot of fun it was, too.

I have to admit, by the time Halo 5 came around, I was less bothered by the lack of split-screen than I would have been during the Xbox 360 era (as I noted in my Halo 5 review). With the rise of online multiplayer and my own personal living situation, I don't often have anyone around to play couch co-op with. Instead, I mostly play online with friends.

But I totally get why the lack of split-screen was a shocking omission for some fans, and why 343 was criticised for it. Clearly, the backlash had an impact on the success of the game - and the developers at 343.

While we're on the subject of Halo 6, can we expect a tease at E3 this month with a release in time for Christmas 2018 on Xbox One, Scorpio and PC? I reckon so!

Oh shit you mean Halo its going to have one of its core features that its had since Halo 1 and wasn't on halo 5. This is great news for all halo fans (I'm honestly not one of them). Halo 5 should have had it and there excuse why it didn't was BS.

So rejoice halo fans one core feature returns in Halo 6 (or whatever the next halo fps is).

[Deleted]

Halo such fond memories my first game/shooter ive ever played.

A true memory to be cherished.

[Video Games]

It's a pretty dead franchise at this point, though not as dead as gears of war. I don't think anybody actually cares anymore.

[Zeta333]

It's a pretty dead franchise at this point, though not as dead as gears of war. I don't think anybody actually cares anymore.

someone obviously hasnt played the most recent game if its a dead franchise.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...e-split-screen




Oh shit you mean Halo its going to have one of its core features that its had since Halo 1 and wasn't on halo 5. This is great news for all halo fans (I'm honestly not one of them). Halo 5 should have had it and there excuse why it didn't was BS.

So rejoice halo fans one core feature returns in Halo 6 (or whatever the next halo fps is).

they reason it didnt bother me is all the people i grew up playing halo with are now adults and dont have time to come over and chill for hours and play splitscreen and are relegated to playing online when they can, its unfortnate but it seems excuses like children and wives get in the way of gaming.

[Wondercrab]

It's at least a little reassuring when the AAA industry acknowledges that compromising gameplay for the sake of visual fidelity is dumb.

[PACOX]

It's a pretty dead franchise at this point, though not as dead as gears of war. I don't think anybody actually cares anymore.

How is Halo dead?

I never owned an Xbox and know that its not dead.

Last one I played was 3 I think. But if they stuck with the same general formula then it has a sold niche in today's FPSs.

[Deleted]

Split screen? Is this 2004?

[dope_danny]

At this point i think they are pretty desperate to get their core audience back. Halo 5 especially was far and wide considered a too extreme departure. Spartans looked more like power rangers with powers to boot, the story completely undid the previous story for no reason known beyond 'MS wanted a cortana app to compete with siri and didnt want her associated with videogames anymore, but it bombed so the brought her back' the art style changed completely and the online was a microtransaction nightmare right from its strawman propaganda video at launch.



They burnt so many people and it doesn't help the xbox 360 userbase really did not take to the xbone to begin with after the disastrous anti consumer reveal. At this point the reputation i see online for Halo is far worse than Destiny at launch. A lot of die hards including folks that have websites and youtube channels that were originally dedicated just to Halo have written it off as '343 doesnt get it and ms is forcing them to butcher the brand for their current microtransaction strategy' and thats a lot of longterm goodwill burnt in the hopes of making a quick buck off the sort of whales that watch the "ebig rec pack openings!!! xDDDD" montages.

Personally i've considered the ip dead for a while. I know the fedoracore "master race" crowd will puff on their vape wands and tell you till they are blue in the face how it 'ruined shooters forever' but on consoles it was incredible from a technical standpoint and the music and gameplay was something special. But it had its day and has a solid 4 or 5 games in the series. The 343 stuff however just seems like brand loyalty marketing vector tactics in action. The kids like halo right? so maybe we can use that to push our latest money making scam. Trouble is that means the game suffers, the multiplayer dies quicker and each game brings in less players than the last.

Last i saw MS's activity page ranked Halo 5 behind Battlefield 1 and unlike Halo bf1 doesnt hide its player numbers and they were around 30,000 at peak and Halo 5 was below that which is 10% of Halo 3 at its peak.

This is a nice gesture but they are in panic mode, they keep losing studio leads and keep trying to figure out why turning the franchise into something that looks more like the marvel cinematic universe is pushing away fans and not bringing in new players and all i see online is die hards screaming 'just give us halo' with low expectations.
Maybe this will help but they really need to rethink what they are pushing.

I mean shit right now every halo fan i know is saying 'halo wars 2 is great but dont buy it because blitz mode is another MS card pack microtransaction scam' and if thats been the consumer response twice now why would they ever go back a 3rd time? Shooter fans arent like mmo players. They dont pull the abused spouse "its gonna be like the good old days youll see they promised" because they dont spend ten years in one game they expect a new one every few years and its an effervescent experience. Only theres a lotta other things to play now and it certainly doesnt help the lineup of xbone exclusives is drying up fast putting off potential new consumers and pushing existing ones to the PS4 instead.

Halo is just a symptom of a whole mess of high up direction choices with the xbox division, they clearly want to bring the old fans back i just dont know how many will bother at this point.

[Armakus]

At this point i think they are pretty desperate to get their core audience back. Halo 5 especially was far and wide considered a too extreme departure. Spartans looked more like power rangers with powers to boot, the story completely undid the previous story for no reason known beyond 'MS wanted a cortana app to compete with siri and didnt want her associated with videogames anymore, but it bombed so the brought her back' the art style changed completely and the online was a microtransaction nightmare right from its strawman propaganda video at launch.



They burnt so many people and it doesn't help the xbox 360 userbase really did not take to the xbone to begin with after the disastrous anti consumer reveal. At this point the reputation i see online for Halo is far worse than Destiny at launch. A lot of die hards including folks that have websites and youtube channels that were originally dedicated just to Halo have written it off as '343 doesnt get it and ms is forcing them to butcher the brand for their current microtransaction strategy' and thats a lot of longterm goodwill burnt in the hopes of making a quick buck off the sort of whales that watch the "ebig rec pack openings!!! xDDDD" montages.

Personally i've considered the ip dead for a while. I know the fedoracore "master race" crowd will puff on their vape wands and tell you till they are blue in the face how it 'ruined shooters forever' but on consoles it was incredible from a technical standpoint and the music and gameplay was something special. But it had its day and has a solid 4 or 5 games in the series. The 343 stuff however just seems like brand loyalty marketing vector tactics in action. The kids like halo right? so maybe we can use that to push our latest money making scam. Trouble is that means the game suffers, the multiplayer dies quicker and each game brings in less players than the last.

Last i saw MS's activity page ranked Halo 5 behind Battlefield 1 and unlike Halo bf1 doesnt hide its player numbers and they were around 30,000 at peak and Halo 5 was below that which is 10% of Halo 3 at its peak.

This is a nice gesture but they are in panic mode, they keep losing studio leads and keep trying to figure out why turning the franchise into something that looks more like the marvel cinematic universe is pushing away fans and not bringing in new players and all i see online is die hards screaming 'just give us halo' with low expectations.
Maybe this will help but they really need to rethink what they are pushing.

I mean shit right now every halo fan i know is saying 'halo wars 2 is great but dont buy it because blitz mode is another MS card pack microtransaction scam' and if thats been the consumer response twice now why would they ever go back a 3rd time? Shooter fans arent like mmo players. They dont pull the abused spouse "its gonna be like the good old days youll see they promised" because they dont spend ten years in one game they expect a new one every few years and its an effervescent experience. Only theres a lotta other things to play now and it certainly doesnt help the lineup of xbone exclusives is drying up fast putting off potential new consumers and pushing existing ones to the PS4 instead.

Halo is just a symptom of a whole mess of high up direction choices with the xbox division, they clearly want to bring the old fans back i just dont know how many will bother at this point.

I think your concept of a scam might be a bit different from mine. Video games have been $60 for an incredibly long time, and in that time, the cost of making a $60 game have more than doubled. I dislike the concept of microtransactions but understand the need in an age where making a video game is such a massive gamble. Seriously, stop making it out to be some weird "us vs them, they hate their fans!!!111" sort of deal. It's far more complicated than that.

[Deleted]

Because we were asking for it on PC... how the fuck do you play Splitscreen on a Shooter? One plays with Keyboard and one with Mouse only or what? Or I guess you could connect 2 Keyboards and 2 Mice?

[dope_danny]

I think your concept of a scam might be a bit different from mine. Video games have been $60 for an incredibly long time, and in that time, the cost of making a $60 game have more than doubled. I dislike the concept of microtransactions but understand the need in an age where making a video game is such a massive gamble. Seriously, stop making it out to be some weird "us vs them, they hate their fans!!!111" sort of deal. It's far more complicated than that.

Yes that must be why. Poor little guy microsoft doesnt have the money to put out a full game like Halo on the xbox without gameplay effecting microtransactions unlike industry multi billion god king mega giants like the titanfall 2 team. What a risk eh? Poor guys at microsoft are starving, withering on the vine even. Of course they need some extra change thrown their way right? gotta help those in need who really need it eh?

/Sarcasm.

Seriously you cannot actually think that unless you have serious doubt in their ability to manage a budget. What they are doing is called by the suits "micro fun gamblified freebuys" sinsiter shit that is in fact anti consumer culture designed around the idea that "if we put something behind a paywall idiots will buy it as long as we add a concept of rarity to it". This has been valves money maker for years, why do you think they dont even make single player games anymore?




Videogames are not cheap but this is by definition a scam. They take existing videogames and alter them so you pay real money for weapons to use in game. Throwing away money for the chance at a chance of getting information already on the disc like a texture or worse a stronger weapon than your opponent and it is for no reason beyond 'how do we get the consumer to keep giving us money for a buy to play release?' and this crate/pack culture of "gamblified freebuys" is just the west implementing the pachinko grey market gambling workarounds from asia. They have pushed it to the point people like yourself see it as supporting a hard on their luck developer that needs money. In this case bloody microsoft.

They got you man.

[Armakus]

Yes that must be why. Poor little guy microsoft doesnt have the money to put out a full game like Halo on the xbox without gameplay effecting microtransactions unlike industry multi billion god king mega giants like the titanfall 2 team. What a risk eh? Poor guys at microsoft are starving, withering on the vine even. Of course they need some extra change thrown their way right? gotta help those in need who really need it eh?

/Sarcasm.

Seriously you cannot actually think that unless you have serious doubt in their ability to manage a budget. What they are doing is called by the suits "micro fun gamblified freebuys" sinsiter shit that is in fact anti consumer culture designed around the idea that "if we put something behind a paywall idiots will buy it as long as we add a concept of rarity to it". This has been valves money maker for years, why do you think they dont even make single player games anymore?




Videogames are not cheap but this is by definition a scam. They take existing videogames and alter them so you pay real money for weapons to use in game. Throwing away money for the chance at a chance of getting information already on the disc like a texture or worse a stronger weapon than your opponent and it is for no reason beyond 'how do we get the consumer to keep giving us money for a buy to play release?' and this crate/pack culture of "gamblified freebuys" is just the west implementing the pachinko grey market gambling workarounds from asia. They have pushed it to the point people like yourself see it as supporting a hard on their luck developer that needs money. In this case bloody microsoft.

They got you man.

You forget that if one of these games fails, Microsoft doesn't take the hit, the game company does right? If a halo game sells poorly, 343 shuts down, Microsoft walks away happy and fine. Example: Fable legends.

Edit: no one is making you buy this shit, for reals. Overwatch is 100℅ as enjoyable if you don't buy loot boxes, you don't gain or lose anything. Jesus, people get so whiney about other people making a profit.

[Manabomb]

I think your concept of a scam might be a bit different from mine. Video games have been $60 for an incredibly long time, and in that time, the cost of making a $60 game have more than doubled. I dislike the concept of microtransactions but understand the need in an age where making a video game is such a massive gamble. Seriously, stop making it out to be some weird "us vs them, they hate their fans!!!111" sort of deal. It's far more complicated than that.

Games have been 60$ for about 3 years... I remember at the turn of the century I could buy a new title for 20$.

For the most part microtransactions are a symptom of being able to copy paste software en-masse endlessly. It's literally how the market was designed.

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You forget that if one of these games fails, Microsoft doesn't take the hit, the game company does right? If a halo game sells poorly, 343 shuts down, Microsoft walks away happy and fine. Example: Fable legends.

Edit: no one is making you buy this shit, for reals. Overwatch is 100℅ as enjoyable if you don't buy loot boxes, you don't gain or lose anything. Jesus, people get so whiney about other people making a profit.

You must be one of those people that laughs everytime someone loses money.

Nobody is making anyone buy anything, except when you are given a huge incentive to hand over money to avoid a self imposed limitation the game has. Then it's fun but at a price but at a price, which is why the microtransaction after box-price model annoys consumers because they feel like they are continuously pouring money into what is essentially an endless money pit.

That's what subscription based services are for.

[Armakus]

Games have been 60$ for about 3 years... I remember at the turn of the century I could buy a new title for 20$.

For the most part microtransactions are a symptom of being able to copy paste software en-masse endlessly. It's literally how the market was designed.

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You must be one of those people that laughs everytime someone loses money.

Nobody is making anyone buy anything, except when you are given a huge incentive to hand over money to avoid a self imposed limitation the game has. Then it's fun but at a price but at a price, which is why the microtransaction after box-price model annoys consumers because they feel like they are continuously pouring money into what is essentially an endless money pit.

That's what subscription based services are for.

I'm really confused, I think you need to re-read my post. Like I said, no one is forcing you to spend money, I personally don't enjoy microtransactions but they don't ruin games for me. That's why I don't buy them. That's my only point here. No one is forcing me to buy them.

[Armakus]

Halo series is dead to me after 3 (and ODST); everything after that to me is 343 fanfiction.

Haven't tried 4 or 5, but I did love the firefights in ODST. Not much other than that, though...

[Zeta333]

Because we were asking for it on PC... how the fuck do you play Splitscreen on a Shooter? One plays with Keyboard and one with Mouse only or what? Or I guess you could connect 2 Keyboards and 2 Mice?

or one of you could use a controller.

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You forget that if one of these games fails, Microsoft doesn't take the hit, the game company does right? If a halo game sells poorly, 343 shuts down, Microsoft walks away happy and fine. Example: Fable legends.

Edit: no one is making you buy this shit, for reals. Overwatch is 100℅ as enjoyable if you don't buy loot boxes, you don't gain or lose anything. Jesus, people get so whiney about other people making a profit.

i dont get it either, warzone is a nice throwaway mode but not only is it mostly ignored by everyone but everyone plays MM/arena, where the packs have no effect at all.

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Games have been 60$ for about 3 years... I remember at the turn of the century I could buy a new title for 20$.

For the most part microtransactions are a symptom of being able to copy paste software en-masse endlessly. It's literally how the market was designed.

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You must be one of those people that laughs everytime someone loses money.

Nobody is making anyone buy anything, except when you are given a huge incentive to hand over money to avoid a self imposed limitation the game has. Then it's fun but at a price but at a price, which is why the microtransaction after box-price model annoys consumers because they feel like they are continuously pouring money into what is essentially an endless money pit.

That's what subscription based services are for.

im sorry what new full games did you pay that wernt indie games for 20$ ? Cus iv been buying games since the 90s and its been between 40-60 the whole time.

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Haven't tried 4 or 5, but I did love the firefights in ODST. Not much other than that, though...

5 is the closest we have come to the pure combat that was halo 2 since halo2, the matchmaking is amazing and downright a worthy successor. It seems people are to butthurt at 343 to try it and see.