Yesterday, Halo developer 343 Industries hit the gaming masses with the sobering news via their YouTube channel that they were scrapping plans to integrate a split-screen co-op campaign into Halo Infinite. The justification for it was, frankly, depressing, as they said that they’re prioritising the ‘live service’ aspect of the game. Their exact statement read:
“In order to improve and accelerate ongoing live service development, and to better address player feedback and quality of life updates, we have reallocated studio resources and are no longer working on local campaign split-screen co-op.”
So that’s it: no disappointment that they can’t give Halo fans a feature that’s been a mainstay throughout the entire series, no apology, no nothing. Some fans say that this also breaks a promise made in 2017 by 343 Industries’ General Manager Bonnie Ross, who following the debacle of Halo 5 having no form of split-screen said that ‘every Halo FPS title would have split-screen going forward.’
However, Halo Infinite does shrewdly feature split-screen competitive multiplayer, which means that now 343 can say that they kept to their promise without having to go all the way and give fans what they actually would’ve expected when Ross made that statement (which is that the split-screen would encompass both co-op campaigns and competitive play, as per tradition). It’s also worth noting that the PC version of Infinite hasn’t received any form of split-screen, so on a hypothetical promise spectrum Ross’ promise definitely leans more towards ‘unfulfilled’ than ‘fulfilled.’
If the inability to include a co-op campaign was merely a technical matter, then perhaps the blow would’ve been a bit lessened, and 343 have even mentioned in the past that there have been certain technical challenges in adding a split-screen campaign. But the fact that it was ultimately ousted in the name of maintaining the stumbling ‘live service’ side of the game feels like a classic case of finance over fandom, no doubt enforced by pressures ‘from’ above at Xbox Game Studios. If you’re enjoying Halo Infinite’s live service component, then more power to you, because there are new maps, the Forge mode, online co-op campaign, and other goodies in the pipeline. But 343 and Xbox Game Studios are overlooking something that they really should understand by now from their own past experiences.
The lesson is that split-screen functionality for certain games is a bit like backwards compatibility. It may not be a ‘raw numbers’ feature that will be taken up by the majority of gamers, but it’s very significant in the way of goodwill – the kind of feature that always generates positive publicity when it’s included, negative publicity when it’s ousted, and crucially shows that the company cares about its longer-serving fans who grew up rubbing shoulders with real-life friends on maps like Zanzibar and Battle Creek; for this small but significant portion of fans, split-screen co-op means far more than, say, a couple of new online maps. It’s a matter of staying true to its roots and loyal to the longer-serving parts of its fanbase. As a developer or publisher, you can’t just be surging towards a live-service future while neglecting the past of a series like Halo. There will be consequences.
Fans aren’t happy of course, with a post on the topic on the Xbox Series X subreddit being by far the most commented-on and upvoted post on the sub over the last few days. Special shoutout goes to Reddit user moff_tarkin, who came up with this zinger referencing that infamous Don Mattrick interview during the unveiling of the Xbox One in 2013:
Thanks for the sardonic laughs, moff_tarkin.
One of Microsoft’s best moves in the last decade was its backwards-compatibility program for the Xbox One. Bringing hundreds of classic Xbox and Xbox 360 games to the Xbox One – all upscaled to 4K and anti-aliased and looking beautiful – generated piles of great publicity for the console following its terrible start. Over the course of a few years, a feature that seemed to be going out of fashion and was all but dismissed by rival console giant Sony had become a hit, to the point that it became a key feature for both the PS5 and Xbox in this generation.
So Microsoft of all companies should understand the importance of preserving certain things that gamers hold dear. It’s not exactly like split-screen gaming has gone out of fashion either. Microsoft’s own Game Pass service has been a veritable treasure trove of old-school beat-em-ups (Battletoads, TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge, to name a couple), and imaginative narrative adventures like the recent As Dusk Falls, which lets up to seven players on phones and controllers make decisions by committee on how the story progresses. Of course, these games don’t have the technical complexity of Halo, nor do they have an ongoing live-service element that seems to be pulling all development resources into a vortex that’s yet to spit out particularly satisfying results.
But that’s exactly where the ‘goodwill’ point comes in. By stepping outside of Halo Infinite’s live-service wormhole to deliver a revered feature like split-screen co-op, 343 and Microsoft could really show that they care about the series’ legacy, reinstating some of the faith that’s been lost during the game’s troubled tenure.
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