One of the problems people have with Halo 5: Guardians is the lack of a split-screen action. Halo Franchise Development Director Frank O’Connor reveals that the feedback has been listened to, though gamers may not like the answer he gave.
In a recent interview with Gamespot O’Connor revealed that the blowback from the choice of not including split-screen has been “huge”. The bad news is that there is no plans to patch the game to add it in, though it may make a return in Halo 6.
“Realistically, for Halo 5, it’s not something we can just throw in a patch,” O’Connor said. “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.”
He also revealed the reason for loss of split-screen was not only to maintain the 60fps, but also because the number of people who played local split-screen was small in relation 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,” he said. “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.”
On what is planned for Halo 6 it appears split-screen is something that they are considering, though it does cause some technical issues:
“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. And the commitment to 60 frames per second, we knew was going to create some issues. And one of those, unfortunately–and we don’t feel good about this–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.”
Are you disappointed that Halo 5 won’t be getting split-screen even in a patch? Let us know your thoughts below.
