Ever since the original Halo: Combat Evolved launched in 2001, a key feature of the franchise has been its support of campaign co-op. Every main series Halo game since the original has supported co-op, with the exception of the recently released Halo Infinite. While the original plan was to launch Halo Infinite with both online and split-screen co-op, 343 Industries announced that the feature would instead be delayed to the start of Season 2 in May 2022. Now it's been confirmed that Halo Infinite co-op has been delayed yet again.
343 Industries has announced that Halo Infinite campaign co-op will not be available with Season 2 when it launches on May 3. However, the plan is still for co-op to be introduced at some point during the season. Halo Infinite campaign co-op will support 4-players online and 2-players in split-screen whenever it does become available, and it seems that is part of the reason why 343 has had to push it back.
According to 343, it's been challenging to incorporate co-op into Halo Infinite's open world. The Halo Infinite open world has created unique challenges with both online and split-screen, as has the need to make sure that it works on everything from the original Xbox One console to the much more powerful Xbox Series X.
While some may argue that it could be best for 343 to give up on the split-screen Halo Infinite co-op, it would likely cause an uproar in the community. As some may recall, Halo 5: Guardians didn't have split-screen co-op, a first for the main series Halo games, and that caused quite the controversy back in the day. In response to the backlash, it was promised that the follow-up to Halo 5 would support split-screen, and so 343 is pretty much locked into making split-screen work in Halo Infinite.
Perhaps abandoning the older hardware would make things easier, but that's also not on the table. While Halo Infinite is a live-service game and will likely be the only Halo game for years to come, it may make sense at some point for 343 to make a new Halo for the Xbox Series X hardware from the ground-up that can better take advantage of the new console's horsepower to deliver features that are trickier to implement on Xbox One.
It will be interesting to see how well Halo Infinite co-op works whenever it's added to the game, and if it will truly be implemented before Season 2 is over. In the meantime, fans also have the Halo Infinite Forge mode to look forward to, which is expected to arrive at some point in Season 3.
Halo Infinite is out now for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.