Home Gaming You’re probably never going to see Halo 5 on PC

You’re probably never going to see Halo 5 on PC

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Halo made the original Xbox console a powerhouse in an industry dominated by Nintendo and Sony. It’s the game that pissed off Steve Jobs and guaranteed that Bungie would be remembered for more than just the criminally underrated action game Oni, setting the scene for a new universe, sequels and quite a few spin-offs.

But its never been much of a PC game.

Sure, the first two Halo games may have made the platform jump, but the rest of the core series has been noticeably absent from the Microsoft platform. And that’s oddly strange, given how Halo 5: Guardians has released in an age where Microsoft is looking to unify their first-party releases across both Xbox and PC platforms. You’d think that Halo 5 would be a perfect match for a platform populated by players who’d happily gobble that space opera up while hurling slurs about your maternal lineage at you. You’d also be wrong.

Because not every game is a great fit for PC, and versa. So sayeth Xbox boss Phil Spencer, who used Ashes of the Singularity as an example when speaking at a media Q&A at Microsoft’s //Build/ 2016 conference, via PC Gamer. “If I enable keyboard and mouse on a console – which we will do – and then you download [Ashes of the Singularity] and you’re playing on a monitor, is that a PC game or a console game? I get out of saying ‘all,’ because I think there are games that people want to play in front of their monitor with a keyboard and mouse, and I want to be somebody that builds those games,” Spencer said.

According to Spencer, that’s why games like Forza 6, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Quantum Break make Windows 10 work for them. But it’s also why he doesn’t want studios to feel like making a game work 100% on PC and Xbox One is mandatory. “I don’t want to make it some kind of artificial mandate, because then I think we end up with ‘Frankengames’, games that really weren’t meant for a certain platform,” Spencer said.

And because some suit said, ‘Hey, everything’s gotta run on both platforms’, you end up with something people don’t want. You should expect it when franchises look like they belong on both platforms, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a mandate for the studios because it’s not.

That, and the money-making Requisition system for Halo 5 would most likely be cracked within minutes the second it hit PC. But more importantly, Spencer said that Halo 5 was designed for consoles specifically, presumably while several PC gamers with Xbox controllers for that platform were muffled by security and dragged off to be beaten behind the stage.  “In terms of Halo FPS on PC, I think there’s a ton of opportunity for us right now, but I don’t want to get into a world where we’re looking back, like at Halo 5,” Spencer said.

It doesn’t mean there’s nothing there that could ever end up on PC, but I’d much rather look forward with what our plans are.

Not the most convincing answer, but hey, anything is possible in the future. Right? So if you’ve been keenly anticipating seeing Halo 5 on PC, you might want to temper those expectations.

Last Updated: March 31, 2016

One Comment

  1. Actually Halo jumped FROM PC and Mac to console. I still remember reading the news at the time, after literally YEARS of previews on PC, and being annoyed at MS buying it up as the new Xbox console launch game– because it also looked very much like it would be an Xbox only game.

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