Bad news, Halo Infinite fans: Split-screen co-op is dead

Halo Infinite screenshot — (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)

Halo Infinite represents a lot of firsts for the series. It's the first game on Xbox Series X; it's the first game with an open-world; and now, unfortunately, it will be the first game without split-screen co-op for the campaign.

One of Halo Infinite's most highly anticipated features is officially dead in the water, but developer 343 Industries has promised a whole host of other features instead.

If you're curious exactly what that list entails, you can check the official Halo Twitter account, which released a roadmap for the next few months.

If you want a full breakdown of the features coming to Halo between now and March 7, 2023, you can check out the update video, or road map image, which we've posted below. It's pretty standard stuff for an online first-person shooter: new game modes, new weapons, new events and so forth.

The two points of particular interest are campaign network co-op and Halo Forge. The former is almost, but not quite, what split-screen co-op fans were hoping to get. Instead of sitting down and blasting through the Halo Infinite campaign with your friends on the couch, you'll be able to team up with them online, each of you at your own TV, presumably in your own living room.

It's not quite as seamless as split-screen co-op, but any kind of campaign co-op in Halo Infinite is long overdue.

Halo Forge is perhaps the bigger of the two features, since it will allow users to create and share their own content for the game. Perhaps some especially enterprising fan could create a split-screen co-op mode in Forge, although that depends on the kind of tools that Microsoft chooses to make available.

In any case, both campaign co-op and Forge will be available on Nov. 8. If you purchased Halo Infinite with the hopes of eventually getting a split-screen co-op mode, your hopes are now officially dashed. But maybe you can funnel your disappointment into creating something in Forge, instead.

Next: I am excited to play Halo Infinite thanks to a tie in novel. But Tony Polanco feels that 343 Industries can no longer be trusted with Halo — it needs to go.

Marshall Honorof was a senior editor for Tom's Guide, overseeing the site's coverage of gaming hardware and software. He comes from a science writing background, having studied paleomammalogy, biological anthropology, and the history of science and technology. After hours, you can find him practicing taekwondo or doing deep dives on classic sci-fi.