Halo's franchise director Frank O'Connor understands that the fan reaction to the removal of split-screen and local co-op along with it in Halo 5 has been "huge," in a recent interview with GamesRadar.
O'Connor pins the omission of split-screen to the decisions of having a locked 60fps for Halo 5:
Realistically, for Halo 5, it's not something we can just throw in a patch. 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.
According to him, the number of people who play local split-screen is few and far between:
We know what the real numbers are 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.
But given the fervently negative response, the development team will consider local co-op via splitscreen for Halo 6:
We haven't said, 'Split-screen is done and we've abandoned it.' 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.
Do you think 343 Industries should patch in split-screen play into Halo 5 even though they don't plan on doing it? Or is not a great loss for you?
