343 Industries has said that split screen could return in Halo 6, but it’s impossible to patch into Halo 5: Guardians.
There has been a lot of controversy surrounding the lack of split-screen in Halo 5: Guardians, and it seems 343 Industries is taking notice.
In a recent interview with Gamesradar, Halo franchise development director Frank O’Connor said the response to the lack of co-op was “huge.”
Unfortunately there are no plans to patch the feature into Halo 5: Guardians, as that would be technically impossible for 343.
“Realistically, for Halo 5, it’s not something we can just throw in a patch,” O’Connor explained. “The simulation the game runs at is 60 frames per second; you’ve seen how big the vistas are; you’ve seen things like the kraken and so on and so on and so on. It’s just not feasible with the engine works. The blowback from it has been huge within reason.”
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O’Connor said that the number of people who regularly play local co-op is relatively small compared to the total player base.
“We know what the real numbers are [of people who play split-screen] and I’m not even going to give them out. But suffice it to say, like most things, they’re not as big as you think they are.”
“Split-screen is fun for me, too. It’s not something that I object to. We would have loved to put it in; if we could have, we would have.”
In addition, O’Connor also teased that Halo 6 could bring back local co-op, but nothing concrete has been decided at the moment.
“It’s certainly a conversation we’ll have about the next game,” he said. “We haven’t said, ‘Split-screen is done and we’ve abandoned it.’ Making a game is about finding a schedule and a list of priorities and technical features that you can actually achieve.”
“The commitment to 60 frames per second, we knew was going to create some issues. And one of those unfortunately is split-screen. So we’ll talk about it for the next game and we’ll talk about it for the future. But it really is a giant technical hurdle and not a trivial thing.”
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343 Industries made the decision to drop split-screen from Halo 5: Guardians to focus on visual performance and fidelity.
Halo 5 runs at a rock solid 60FPS, so it seems the gamble has paid off for the most part.
It is reassuring that 343 is listening to player feedback, and is willing to change whatever it can to keep fans happy in the future
Halo 5 Guardians is now available exclusively on Xbox One.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
