Concerned that there may not be split screen

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

I’ve been a split screen gamer for my entire career in gaming. Starting with my PS2, my brother (Eric), my father, my uncle (nicknamed BB), and I would spend hours playing games like ATV Offroad Fury, MX Unleashed, and a bunch of the original Medal of Honor games; including Rising Sun and Vanguard.

Flash forward a year or two and we sell our PS2 and all of our games to put towards a new system; the PS3. At first I was going to stick with Playstation as my console of choice but after playing Halo 3 at one of my friends house, I was sucked into getting an Xbox 360 - and I absolutely loved it. Me, my brother, my dad, and BB continued our weekend-split screen gaming sessions for years, we played Halo 3, Reach, Halo 4, CoD4, W@W, MW2, BO1, and MW3 at one time or another. The peak of those days were during the MW2 and Reach days. After a while I was getting older and my different uncle moved into town and through a series of events we eventually stopped playing with my uncle BB. However, we did find a new companion.

My other brother (Mike), began to join us in playing Halo 4, BO2, Monopoly, and Ticket to Ride - all 4 player games. When Ghosts was announced we were all excited to have a new CoD game to play with just the 4 of us, but sadly that excitement ended when we found out the max players you could have was 2.

Although I was bummed out we still wanted to get a next gen console, and hearing that the Xbox One could connect up to 8 controllers at once was amazing (not for split screen games, that would probably still limit to 4, but games like Monopoly and Ticket to Ride where you have local players all on the same screen and board). We completed the cycle again and sold the 360 with all the games to get a One.

Flash forward to today - I don’t think there is any 4 player games on the Xbox One right now…and if there is they aren’t FPS’. I hope that even though this is a new engine and a new console, that 343 can find a way to keep the classic 4 player modes in this next generation of Halo.

2

That’s a pretty far-fetched assumption, being afraid that there won’t be splitscreen.

Though I don’t expect Halo 5 to take advantage of 8-player splitscreen, having 4-players, at least outside of Campaign or other PvE gamemodes, is a given.

I can’t see any reason on why they’d drop 4-player splitscreen aside from losing sales and alienating people.

3

> That’s a pretty far-fetched assumption, being afraid that there won’t be splitscreen.
>
> Though I don’t expect Halo 5 to take advantage of 8-player splitscreen, having 4-players, at least outside of Campaign or other PvE gamemodes, is a given.
>
> I can’t see any reason on why they’d drop 4-player splitscreen aside from losing sales and alienating people.

It isn’t as far fetched as you would think. I too have noticed the lack of Split screen among games these days. Me and my roommate years ago use to sit in my dorm and just play games but nowadays we have to play individually and hand the controller off back and forth. I don’t think there are any game on X1 that enable 4 players to play at once. The Titanfall creators even said that they were against having split screen if I heard correctly.

4

Yes, I know it’s a sad day when games a no longer being made with split-screen in mind.

5

> Yes, I know it’s a sad day when games a no longer being made with split-screen in mind.

It really is. Please don’t drop this feature 343!

6

> > That’s a pretty far-fetched assumption, being afraid that there won’t be splitscreen.
> >
> > Though I don’t expect Halo 5 to take advantage of 8-player splitscreen, having 4-players, at least outside of Campaign or other PvE gamemodes, is a given.
> >
> > I can’t see any reason on why they’d drop 4-player splitscreen aside from losing sales and alienating people.
>
> It isn’t as far fetched as you would think. I too have noticed the lack of Split screen among games these days. Me and my roommate years ago use to sit in my dorm and just play games but nowadays we have to play individually and hand the controller off back and forth. I don’t think there are any game on X1 that enable 4 players to play at once. The Titanfall creators even said that they were against having split screen if I heard correctly.

It’s not far-fetched for most games to lose splitscreen multiplayer, however every Halo game to date has had it. Taking it out just wouldn’t make sense for a Halo game.

7

I’m afraid for lack of split screen to. The lack of split screen games is really stupid. Some games I can understand, but there’s no excuse to not have split screen for games like Titanfall or Halo.

EDIT: What happened to the good old days of Halo 2 or 3 when you invited a couple of your buddies for MP action? The whole industry, I feel, is trying to push for less split screen just so other people are forced to buy their own consoles, which I know means more money for them, but some situations can come back and bite them in the -Yoink-.

8

I think the main reason Halo 4 was only 2 player split-screen was due to the fact the 360 couldn’t handle it. Even when I tried split-screen online with my brother the lag was horrendous and I have a very good, consistent connection.

With new hardware I am sure we will see the return of 4 players split in Halo.

9

> I think the main reason Halo 4 was only 2 player split-screen was due to the fact the 360 couldn’t handle it. Even when I tried split-screen online with my brother the lag was horrendous and I have a very good, consistent connection.
>
> With new hardware I am sure we will see the return of 4 players split in Halo.

H4 was 4-player splitscreen

10

I can’t see 343i taking out a split screen. They know that not all Xbox one users will have a gold membership.

Also they’ll know people like doing 1v1s in custom games, playing two player campaign and forging all in split screen. I don’t think its going anywhere.

11

I think Halo was the beginning of splitscreen in video games, or atleast made it the most popular.

I haven’t had high hopes for 343 since Halo 4, but I know they wouldn’t question the importance of a splitscreen game.

Also, they should allow four player splitscreens on firefight and campaign, there is no point to limit it to two players. -just had to throw that in there :slight_smile:

12

> I’m afraid for lack of split screen to. The lack of split screen games is really stupid. Some games I can understand, but there’s no excuse to not have split screen for games like Titanfall or Halo.

I was kind of expecting Titanfall to not have split screen, since it being a mainly online matchmaking game which would make the demand for the resources in making offline split screen a little redundant.

Let’s just hope that Halo 5 doesn’t suffer from the same ideologies.

> EDIT: What happened to the good old days of Halo 2 or 3 when you invited a couple of your buddies for MP action? <mark>The whole industry, I feel, is trying to push for less split screen just so other people are forced to buy their own consoles,</mark> which I know means more money for them, but some situations can come back and bite them in the -Yoink!-.

It’s got to take a real moron in the marketing team for them to think that their customers will want to buy another console just to have 4 local players. They’ll, without any reasonable doubt, be losing far more sales than gaining them, and as you said, it’d come back to bite them in the -Yoink-.

Let’s hope that Microsoft isn’t that stupid. But then again, they thought that they’d be able to compete with the PS4 by having their console as anti-consumer as possible. However, seeing how miserably that idea failed, maybe they’ll give us guaranteed support for split screen in all gamemodes as a small, but sure, act of redemption.

13

The Halo 5 art released shows one Spartan above another with a horizontal split in the middle. Split-screen in Halo 5 confirmed.

14

I agree that having 4 player split screen is a feature that is lacking in just about all mp fps games. Halo is the one exception and it would be greatly missed if taken out. I host Halo nights at my house every month or two and there’s nothing like getting 10-12 people together and battle it out and talk trash to each other. Xbox live is amazing and playing online is awesome but getting your buds together for epic Halo nights…nothing beats it and it wouldn’t be as possible if everyone needed to bring a console and their own screen.

15

> It’s not far-fetched for most games to lose splitscreen multiplayer, however every Halo game to date has had it. Taking it out just wouldn’t make sense for a Halo game.

I thought the same thing with Call of Duty. Every game has had it until Ghosts, which only had 2 players, not 4.

> I think the main reason Halo 4 was only 2 player split-screen was due to the fact the 360 couldn’t handle it. Even when I tried split-screen online with my brother the lag was horrendous and I have a very good, consistent connection.
>
> With new hardware I am sure we will see the return of 4 players split in Halo.

Halo 4 has 4 player. We played offline anyways, never really went into online matches.

16

It would be both sad and funny to see it go. “Better graphics! Smoother gameplay! No split screen! Buy our latest games and consoles, they are ‘(d)evolving’ far beyond your imagination!”

Hopefully 343 will keep split screen. It has its own magic, which online multiplayer can’t replace at all. Unplugging friend’s controller, screen peaking and playing with a friend in the same room is more entertaining than just talking in a party chat.

17

Halo has a strong social aspect with that the other big FPSs cannot really compete, or at least haven’t really tried, and it would be foolish to not build upon and improve that aspect in my opinion.

One of the many things I like about Halo as a game is that you can share the entire game, from Campaign to Forge, in local Co-Op mode with a friend.

I got introduced to Halo via splitscreen, I introduced friends to Halo via splitscreen and with said friends I still play local and lan splitscreen matches.
So, in my opinion, when you remove splitscreen from Halo you would actually remove one of its social core elements which defined the game.

18

While I doubt they’d intentionally get rid of it, I do fear it might be forgotten with the new engine.

Splitscreen is a core reason why I stuck with halo. There are a number of games I have decided to not pick up, or even return, due to lack of spliscreen.

19

This is a legitimate concern, and I hope split screen continues not to be alienated by this franchise.

I still fondly drift back into the Halo 2 days when my friends and my Dad and I would gather 'round the TV and duke it out on small maps like Lockout or Ascension in epic 4-player action, or just goof of on Burial Mounds or Coagulation.

20

If Halo 5 has any co-op modes, can we get 4-player splitscreen for that too? Not being able to play Campaign, Firefight or Spartan Ops with both my bro and sis really bites.