It's a day of celebration for 343 Industries with the huge Halo Infinite Winter Update beginning to roll out, but the team has been addressing a slightly more awkward topic as well - the continued lack of local campaign co-op support.
A few months ago, 343 confirmed that local campaign co-op had been cancelled for Halo Infinite, but didn't really provide any specific details at the time. Then, players began finding ways to glitch into local campaign co-op with relatively few issues (if any), which led to more questions being asked of the development team.
Today, 343 has finally addressed those questions, with Sean Baron (Head of Halo Infinite Live Service) revealing on IGN Live that players had only managed to glitch into an "80% complete" version of local campaign co-op:
"We of course were working on [local campaign co-op] for many, many months... years. There are a lot of challenges there from a technical perspective, and what people were able to glitch into is probably 80% [complete]. But, the amount of work for us to get from an 80% quality to a 100% quality is significant. And the amount of effort that would take right now is not something that we can commit to, and I'm not even sure how long it would take to be honest."
Baron then went on to explain that if 343 Industries was to implement local campaign co-op in Halo Infinite, it would be required to support all platforms, and therefore the challenge becomes even harder:
"There are things where, even if we have just a few crashes — I'm not sure what platform those players were playing on, because we would have to support all platforms — that's not maybe even something we can even get through our certification passes."
It's still disappointing that we're not getting local campaign co-op in Halo Infinite, then, but at least we've got a proper, in-depth response about why the feature was cancelled... we just wish it could have been pushed over the line!
Of course, online campaign co-op is definitely still part of the Halo Infinite experience, and is being rolled out today as part of the Winter Update alongside the highly anticipated Forge Mode and lots of new multiplayer content.
What do you make of these comments? Let us know down in the comments section below.
[source youtube.com]
Comments 35
So basically we are lazy and rather push out an incomplete game then a complete game, gotcha. Well they won't be seeing a dime from me ever again. Maybe they should have just kept Halo with Bungie.
The thing is this isn't revolutionary, console FPS' since Goldeneye, Timespliters and before had split screen local co-op, it's not new. A shame that their engine doesn't seem to be optimised for this and it was causing them such headaches.
This was made worse as they had SPECIFICALLY mentioned it was coming back after Halo 5. A damn shame, but seems they have larger fires to put out.
It's a shame local co-op was cut from Halo Infinite. Microsoft should be prioritizing local co-op in general to further the appeal of the Xbox Series S (and the Xbox ecosystem overall) as a family/party gaming console.
@themightyant My thoughts exactly. It's one thing to trim a particular feature during development, but it's another to trim the one feature they made a big point about definitely including going forward. It's a very bad look. And for any feature that major to be dropped, when the studio itself has had years to develop the game and almost unlimited resources... It's really poor. It likely is the engine causing these problems, but this is an engine that they custom built for Halo! It is somewhat unbelievable that it can then fail to be suitable for basic Halo features.
You can always refuse to play the game if you're that distraught over there being no split-screen local play...
@milhouse1975 Or….people can voice their displeasure with 343 so they get the point….which has been working because they are revamping stuff.
Local co-op has 0.0% impact on me as split-screen is not something I (nor most people) do anymore unless it's a quick game like Mario Kart. What is more frustrating is their excuse that they don't have the time to do it. Well, they sure haven't been doing much this last year, so where is all that time going? The gross lack of multiplayer content is ridiculous. No excuse to not have more maps. 2 maps! 2?!?!? That's it?!?! Insane!
Time management is a "management" issue. I know one higher up stepped down from 343 for other reasons, but they seriously need to clean house on the management staff there. It's just inexcusable.
@Kaloudz
But only 20 are doing a good full days work.
Our priority was & will continue to be micro transactions is the real answer lol
"The time it would take to properly implement couch coop would take valuable resources away from our monetization plans."
Couch coop was promised, and I would think the reputation of their flagship title is more important in the long term than extracting value out of a shipwreck wherever they can.
Edit: Actually, how in the world is "Its too harrrrrrrdddddd" an acceptable excuse from a world class studio?
Why not just make it a feature for the Series X|S Enhanced versions at the very least if it being on Xbox One is the actual hurdle? Give people with the current gen consoles a feature Halo shouldn't be without & maybe incentivize some people to upgrade. It's a better solution that just scrapping it entirely.
The quest for pixel perfect graphics is the problem. Who cares if the frame rate dips during split screen at moments. So long as it's functional who cares?!?! The fear of an online backlash for something not 100% should not be the cause to cancel something that is genuinely a "Halo cornerstone"
That and just drop it for the OG Xbox One too... I mean seriously, this company is just useless.
343i time and time again fail to deliver. They have all the weight and finances of Microsoft behind them and continually underperform.
At this point I’m absolutely amazed that Microsoft seemingly continues to back this studio without asking any questions about the quality of their biggest IP and where their resources are going
The telling point for me is that those who PAID to be able to enjoy a feature in the campaign (which 343 promised, of their own volition, (at least as far as I know no-one held a gun to their head)) have been placed at a lower priority than those who want to play for free and may, or may not, kick them a couple $$ for the multiplayer stuff. The message has been received loud and clear, and my financial support of anything they do in the future will reflect this.
Let's be honest, Xbox One is the reason it won't come out. They should've never made it for Xbox One in the first place. And with how poorly they've managed their time as far as MP content, they clearly should've kept it Series exclusive.
@Trmn8r The only reason its on the Xbox One is to increase the pool of potential customers for microtransactions.
@steve_mcsteve They're not world class. They're a hodge podge that was put together to run Halo Waypointa a website, then took over Halo when Bungie left.
Don’t let nearly 10 year old hardware push you back, refocus your attention and optimizations on local multiplayer, and stop putting most of your resources into the “free service” online which is still worse than previous titles.
I don’t know if anyone has tried to play today but I did since they put out new stuff. The desync is so bad that MP is unplayable….
@Fenbops What do you expect Microsoft to do? Walk in there and start slaming fist on the table and firing people? Microsoft isn't allowed to be aggressive with studios any more especially after the whole situation with lionhead.
Plus it not like Halo Infinite isn't making them money.
@steve_mcsteve They probably could've done the multiplayer on it. But they prob shouldnt have done the campaign on it, being open world.
The problem is they promised this feature and then dropped it with a low key announcement months after the game was released.
It should have launched with the game, just as the campaign should have launched at the same time as the multiplayer.
The development of this game clearly had issues. The game has suffered because of the developers and they need to do better in the future because this is Xbox’s flagship game.
@AverageGamer after a decade of underperforming and hundreds of millions of dollars I expect change. Their main franchise game has become a laughing stock. Halo infinite took 6 years to develop with a $200 million + budget, was delayed a year, needed The Coalition to help them out and this joke of a studio still couldn’t release a finished game.
They’ve had more than enough time and goodwill to do the Halo series justice and they haven’t. Change is needed.
That's not the only thing they cant commit on.
343 should just surrender the franchise over to a development studio who can do it better.
@Fenbops The issue is how the general public while interpret closing 343, or handing the IP over to another studio, and massively downsizing 343.
Even tho everyone in the gaming community and especially the Halo community see that 343 needs to be let go... The general media will easily find a way to turn any potential layouts off at the 343 into a negative.
Yeah...... Boo.... Lame....
They have the money just didn't see the profit return so they decided against it.
Why doesn’t this game support lan and system link options
Well they aren't wrong in saying they can't commit to it. I've yet to see them ever commit to anything, so I have no reason to believe it's a lie.
Just started playing Gears of War for the very first time in my life. If it didn't have couch coop, I never would have.
To me, its cancellation is a bit like Gotham Knights cancelling the Last Gen versions of those 'complete' games which no doubt were '80%' complete (or more) but realise that they 'cannot' get the game to perform at a 'consistent' enough quality to pass QC to release publicly.
The difference is that Halo Infinite 'released' on technologically antique hardware and ANY feature has to work on OG XB1 hardware with its 'weak' CPU/GPU - certainly relative to Series S/X hardware. As I said when it was first announced that local co-op campaign was cancelled, that it was down to trying to get it to 'work' on XB1 hardware - knowing how CPU intensive the game is on PC's - to essentially 'double' the workload on the CPU and still run smoothly enough. Online Co-op only needs to sync data, but you have individual hardware running for each person rather than 1 hardware unit running multiple people.
They could of released it 'just' for next gen consoles but then all those on last gen 'miss out' and 'Online' co-op everyone can play - regardless of whether you are playing on Console, PC or even Cloud. You could still play 'Couch' co-op with someone playing on console sat next to someone playing on their 'student' Laptop via Cloud. It doesn't need to be a high-end gaming Laptop either so you can still play on the 'couch' together...
At the end of the day, I know its 'disappointing' that a promised feature doesn't make it - but its not as if you can't play the Campaign at all 'co-operatively' and in the same room with Xbox Cloud - you could both sit on the Sofa with Laptops, Mobiles, Tablets etc and 'play' together....
@BrilliantBill I couldn't agree more about Digital Foundry. People rely too much on their analysis and go crazy and say it's unacceptable when a game goes below 60 fps, like 57-58 fps, or the resolution is below what they think is right.
@sixrings I think they just added LAN multiplayer with the new update. It may have been there before but I didn't notice it there until today.
@ZYDIO I thought the lan was only for pc?
" But, the amount of work for us to get from an 80% quality to a 100% quality is significant."
How would 343i know? Do they have some prior benchmark to compare it to that I don't know about?
Works both ways, I'm no longer committed to playing the game. See how that works?
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