When Microsoft released Halo 5: Forge on PC in 2016, a lot assumed that its single-player campaign would also find its way to the PC. And yesterday, Tyler Owens, a former Halo 5 dev confirmed that there were plans to bring it to the PC. However, Microsoft has decided to cancel that PC port due to some technical issues.
Owens did not clarify what those tech issues were. Some assume that the game’s physics were tied to its framerate. That was a common issue console games had back in that era. Nevertheless, this sounds like a mere excuse to me, and nothing more.
The truth is that MS did not want to invest any resources in a PC port of Halo 5. If it was relatively easy to port it, they would have done it. However, it appears that a PC port would require some work. So, instead of investing resources – and money – in it, MS decided to simply pull the plug. That’s the harsh truth. It wasn’t impossible to port it.
This very same thing happened to a lot of PC ports that never got released during the Xbox 360 era. Do you want another example? Remember Red Dead Redemption? You know, the game Rockstar claimed it was impossible to port to any other platform as it was a “spaghetti code“? Well, the game got remastered and came out on PS4/Nintendo Switch, and it will hit PC tomorrow.
In short, these technical issues are mere excuses and nothing more. Hell, we even have modders that can unlock a game’s locked framerate on PC. Surely the devs who have access to the source code can do a better job with their tools, right? Unless they are really incompetent.
Anyway, at this point, I don’t expect we’ll ever see Halo 5: Guardians on PC. That’s a bummer as every other Halo game is now on PC. So, no Halo 5 SP for us, unless MS remasters all of its older games for both Xbox and PC. Now that would be a stupid idea, especially since we’ve already gotten remasters for all 4 main games via Halo: MCC. But hey, this is MS we’re talking about. So, who knows?
I wish but it’s never going to happen imo. I think the port that was being considered ran into significant tech hurdles and was scrapped.
— Tyler Owens (@heytred) October 27, 2024
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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