Halo 2 PC isn't Live Anywhere

By Tom Bramwell Published 30 May, 2006

Does have new maps though.

Halo 2 may be one of the first games that runs exclusively on Windows Vista, but Bungie says it won't be one of the first to adopt the principles of Microsoft's cross-platform Live Anywhere formula.

Bungie confirmed as much in its latest weekly update. Apparently the Halo 2 Xbox/360 and PC communities will be kept apart partly because "a level playing field would be impossible" due to the gulf between the Xbox and PC launches and partly because "both versions have their controls and aiming system balanced and tuned for that system's abilities and you would have a lopsided situation at best" - which surely raises some questions about how well even games developed from the ground up are going to cope. Still, that's a matter for another time.

On the plus side, those of you waiting patiently for the PC SKU, you can look forward to some new toys and tools - as Bungie intimated while continuing its justification.

"A game like Shadowrun was built from the ground up to run on both platforms with finely balanced cross-platform gameplay," the developer pointed out. "We don't have that luxury, and instead intend to make the Vista version of Halo 2 the best it can be. Add to that the fact that we will have new maps built specifically for the Vista version and a map editor, and cross-platform matchmaking becomes even more complex and less realistic."

Elsewhere in the update, there's news on the retirement of Clanmatch playlists in Halo 2, and even a few words on the possibility of Marathon, Bungie's old-old-days Mac FPS, appearing on Xbox Live Arcade. "Of course it's possible, it's just not on any current agenda," said Bungie. "If it's any consolation, many, many people think it's a good idea."

More on Halo 2 for Vista when there is more.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (19) Latest comment 6 years ago

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  • lambtron #1 6 years ago

    Sounds perfectly sensible to me. Besides I would imagine the Console and PC communities are pretty different beasts - they probably wouldn't get along very well ^_^.

  • Hicksy #2 6 years ago

    Still not impressed this is not xp compatible >:|

  • NoCodeNed2 #3 6 years ago

    >>Yeah, I don't understand the need for a new OS at all really

    Surely, Microsoft don't want you to pay for something you don't need...surely not...say it's not true...aaaaah!!!!

    /world ends

  • JediMasterMalik #4 6 years ago

    Well M$ sure do love their PC gamers. So much so they want them all to buy their fantastic (undoubtebly buggy) new operating system. Yay for Micro$oft. :)
    Edited by 1 at 30/05/06 @ 10:44

  • LFace #5 6 years ago

    Halo 2 on PC isnt going to be well received anyways, probably just like the first Halo. Its a console FPS that pales in comparison to PC FPS games. Compare it to the stuff were used to on PC and its shoddy. Making it Vista only will kill its sales tenforth. Its gonna sink faster than some fast sinky thing I reckon.

  • Mho7276501 #6 6 years ago

    is anyone even vaguely interested in halo 2 on the pc?

  • Wrestlevania #7 6 years ago

    I'm interested in seeing Halo 2 running on PC, but I'm not intending to upgrade to Vista because of its ridiculous hardware requirements.

    Basically - on Bungie's part - this news story boils down to:

    "We're too busy on Halo 3, so you're getting an emulated version of Xbox Halo 2 just like you did with the original Halo on PC."

    Missed opportunity. Whether Xbox and PC gamers gel together is more a question of playground ethics than a fundamental gameplay problem. Personally, I can handle hoardes of potty-mouthed 12 year old Americans.

  • YogiTah #8 6 years ago

    M$ is now planning to get in to Vacuum Cleaners - but they will only suck with Windows Vista :-))

  • Mho7276501 #9 6 years ago

    i would be interested in seeing what they have done to it, but i wouldnt buy vista just to play it. I did play through the first one on the PC and thought it was an OK shooter, the multi-player was fun. But my Xbox owning friend tells me the sequel is not as good as the first one so i think it would have to do something extra extra special to even begin to tempt me.

  • jellyhead #10 6 years ago

    I'm not really interested in Halo 2 on PC as i didn't really like it on xbox as for the Vista malarky. Ha, Vista was probably going to be as big of a dog as 98ME was until they got the xbox360 boys in to recode the media centre parts, which is actually a huge part of vista. MS only released the specs because pc manufacturers were complaining no-one was buying new kit as they were waiting for MS to announce the specs.
    Anyway, I'm not upgrading until the gfx card manufs have started putting out the HCP chip as i don't want to have to buy another card again when they do. Vista, i'm preparing to laugh at it's buggy bloatedness but at least the gfx-whores will be happy with their 3d accelerated, alpha blended, animated file icons.
    woot or something.

  • TR421 #11 6 years ago

    I hope I read that correctly, and they are abandoning the playlist system for the PC.

  • Fubdub #12 6 years ago

    Wait, is the vision of this Live Anywhere thing that I'll have idiotic preteen xbox players yelling at me, even on my PC, is it an opposite Muhammed thing, if I won't come to the whiny children then the whiny children will come to me. Fuck!

  • Krun #13 6 years ago

    @fubdub normal age of xbox 360 players is well over 18+. Most of the players on live I've met are are sensible adults. I've met far more childishness playing WOW on the PC, than I ever did playing Halo 2 on the xbox.

    As a adult that uses his PC for work, I prefer not to fill it with games. I have my entertainment Room where I watch DVDs TV and Play games on My HD Flatpanel widescreen TV.

    Console does not equal kids.

  • Fubdub #14 6 years ago

    That is true actually, WOW is filled to the brink with annoying little twats, one of the reason I stopped playing, but at least they aren't speaking to me. But I do concede that maybe Xbox live doesn't live up to it's bad reputation of being mainly idiots.

    Still, I never saw the appeal in voicechat in games in the first place, except of course in those rare instances when I'm playing with real life friends online.

  • yagisencho #15 6 years ago

    Halo 2 seems an odd choice. Next generation OS + old generation game = ??

  • NegativeZero #16 6 years ago

    Personally I found Halo 2 to be extremely disappointing. The multiplayer was refined in some places, but badly dumbed-down in others. While interesting at first, the whole dual-wielding gimmick was badly implemented (should have been a system where if you had one-handed weapons as both your primary and secondary, holding Y would toggle between dual-wielding and single-wielding mode) and making the SMG the default took out a good amount of the skill needed to play well (ie precision aiming). The Single Player was a joke as well - would have been fine if you only played as the Chief, but making you play with the Arbiter suddenly was like a kick in the balls.


    That said, Marathon on Live Arcade would make me go out and buy an X360 straight away.

  • projectmayhem #17 6 years ago

    anyone looking forward to this should really invest in some proper PC games, as halo was not a good PC game, and i somehow doubt halo2 will either. especially after the slew of better games that have arrived since it's release.

    shoddy move by microsoft to force anyone who wants it to buy vista though... but that's typical microsoft, despite the smiles they put on at e3 for you.

  • fawe3 #18 6 years ago

    Eh, why do they bother? Even if it was Halo 3 I would seriously think before buying it, with Halo 2 im not even interested in bothering to pirate it.

  • Mauve #19 6 years ago

    This entire article is sourced from one weekly update on bungie.net which I read three days before this was published. Not exactly quality journalism, Eurogamer.

    Halo 2 Vista is going to flop. Guaranteed. There's no market for it - Vista uptake is not likely to be rapid; a large market segment is already sick of it; and even then, it's an Xbox game that won't really feel fast enough for PC gamers, compared to other PC FPSes.

    So I can't see how the finances work. They need to improve all the assets for high-res displays, re-evaluate the play balance for mouse (and ideally faster physics), get it working on a variety of disparate PC systems, and that's even before they get to rewriting the entire multiplayer system for DirectX rather than Live!.

    Once the game has gone gold they there will be additional costs in maintaining patches and fighting cheaters and hackers and so on.

    If they try to cut corners to reduce these costs and turn a profit, the game won't be worth the DVD it's printed on.

    I think Microsoft is pouring money into Bungie for this. What does it imply about the market for Vista that they need Halo 2 so desperately to sell it? And is Halo really the best intellectual property Microsoft can call on for the purpose? And why can't Eurogamer come up with these sorts of rhetorical questions?