As a fan of Halo since the original and owner of every Halo game to date, I can say that a lack of split-screen may actually prevent me from buying Halo 5 - at least not until a significant price drop.
I never had Xbox Live for the original Xbox, so split-screen was my only way to enjoy any multiplayer experiences with Halo: CE and Halo 2. Without it, my interest in the game probably would have died long ago. Around the time of Halo 3, ODST, and Reach, I managed to acquire Xbox Live and a lot of friends who also enjoyed the Halo games. Thanks to this, my experience primarily transitioned to online coop, but I still frequently played games on split-screen with friends who were visiting or did not own a system of their own.
Then I went to college.
Suddenly, I was unable to balance work and school in a way which would allow me to devote much time to multiplayer. That - coupled with the progression system in Halo 4 - pushed me away from the multiplayer scene and, once again, a bulk of my experience with the game was from playing split-screen with friends. I recently purchased an Xbox One primarily for the single player portion of the Master Chief Collection. I have since played through many of the campaigns in split-screen with several friends who had never played Halo before and re-visited some campaigns on legendary with friends who had. In fact, that has accounted for a massive majority of my play time on the Xbox One - far beyond Destiny, Sunset Overdrive, or the MCC multiplayer.
Although I did not think Halo 4 was as good as most Halo games, I thought it was a good first entry from a new company and had high hopes for Halo 5. With this news, however, I feel like I will get far less replay value from the game and I do not feel it will be worth $60, especially after many of my friends have dropped Xbox for PC or PS4 in the wake of recent controversies.
In all honesty, I could not give the slightest toss about a graphics downgrade for split-screen play. I understand that, when it comes to implementing something like that, it is probably easier said than done. Still, I would much rather have more fun playing a game that looks alright than be stuck playing a great looking game by myself and have no desire to return to it when I’m done. After all, the Master Chief Collection seems to have sold extremely well and, frankly, those games don’t hold a candle to today’s graphics showpieces.
Maybe I’m in the minority of their sales demographic, but I can’t imaging this wont have an impact on their sales. I do wish 343 the best of luck with the game, but I am very disappointed by this news and will probably wait a year or two for a big sale or drop in price. Without split-screen, Halo 5 is almost definitely not worth $60 to me and I will be interested how many others feel the same way.
As a sort of side note, I find the big shift away from split-screen console games that we’ve seen over the past decade or so to be particularly strange. I know there are still other reasons to game on a console over PC, but it seems to me like consoles are giving up one of their greatest strengths: couch-based “party gaming”. The internet can never completely supplant local multiplayer, and local multiplayer is only economically feasible for most people when split-screen is available.
Without the ability to play with friends locally, I may as well invest a bit more in a gaming PC with more accurate controls, more games, cheaper games, no added online costs, full backwards comparability, and better graphics. I can still plug it into my TV and use an Xbox controller for most games if I want that experience and a PC also allows me to access many additional services for working, communicating, browsing the web, and much more. I am quickly finding fewer and fewer reasons not to do this.
