In yet another bizarre turn of events, following on from XBOX’s questionable timing of studio closures and layoffs, just days after their Summer Showcase, it’s since transpired that Online Subscriptions are required to play couch co-op in the upcoming Halo: Campaign Evolved.
In a Community Q&A you can read here, Halo Studios’ Senior Community Manager confirms account requirements essential for playing Campaign Evolved – for XBOX users, the second player in your life will need to sign into their own Microsoft account, to play splitscreen. For PlayStation users however, not only will your Player 2 need to sign into an account, but both will also need to be linked to a Microsoft account, and BOTH have an active PS+ subscription too. For LOCAL coop.
This makes absolutely no sense; requiring an online subscription to play your couch coop game, offline. I’m not sure on who made this decision, if it stems from XBOX themselves, or Sony, but regardless of who, it’s yet another anti-consumer move in an industry flooded with anti-consumer practices.
Perhaps the backlash will be enough to make whomever turn tact on this decision, but even then, that’s not good enough in my opinion.
Splitscreen is exactly that. Split. Screen.
Need I say, if you’re sat on the sofa with a mate. you shouldn’t have to sign into any accounts to play a coop game. Yet alone purchase a subscription for it, and then have to link it to account after account. It’s barriers like these, that only go further in souring views on Microsoft’s “redemption arc” under Asha Sharma, and has already caused irreparable harm to the reputation of this remake.
I mean the Master Chief Collection was bad enough when it came to coop – even now Halo 1 and 2 are still bugged and broken when trying to launch coop sessions.
Who remembers when you could pass a controller to a friend, and just play? It feels like everything in this day and age is monetised. And I’m tired of it.
Ms Sharma may be looking to “financially reset XBOX,” but decisions like these only push people towards resetting their financial decisions with Microsoft.
Update:
Following the original post, Halo Studios have now come forward and stated PS+ is indeed not required, for splitscreen play, in Halo: Campaign Evolved.
Somehow, I don’t believe this was an incorrect statement, at the time of the original Q&A. Mistakes happen don’t get me wrong, but this is clearly backtracking following the backlash that followed the PS+ requirement – you’re telling me the marketing team didn’t see the negative feedback for an entire 2 days, before correcting themselves? I somehow doubt it.
But still, whilst the PS+ non-requirement being solved is all well and good, another issue remains in my view… What exactly happens if your couch coop buddy doesn’t sign into both PSN AND their linked Microsoft account? Can you just not play coop? And isn’t that essentially a form of DRM?
The motto “don’t fix what isn’t broken” springs to mind here. Why is something as simple as plugging in a second controller, so overcomplicated in 2026? Fire Truck for the Atari got couch coop right and that was back in 1978!
Maybe the whole “Halo: Campaign Evolved” needs a rethink… Maybe less “Campaign Evolved“, and maybe more “Common Sense Evolved“?
VGT-Joe