"Halo Wars 2," the sequel to the highly rated "Halo Wars" created by Bungie, was announced to arrive on Xbox One and PC at Microsoft's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) press conference. However, it was revealed that it will not have support for cross-platform play.
Studio head Dan Ayoub of 343 Industries, the developer in charge now of the franchise, told Eurogamer their intention of putting cross-platform support, but decided against it at the end due to timing.
"Cross-play is something we were looking at early on in development," said Ayoub. "We've been in development since 2014. But as we looked at our timing and our design decisions, we focused on some different things that basically became Xbox Play Anywhere."
Xbox Play Anywhere allows players to play their digital game on both platforms, no matter which platform they downloaded the game on. It also allows players to save on one platform, say the Xbox One, and load the save file into the other platform, which in this case is Windows PC. Interchanging platforms do not have an effect on progress and achievements.
The news comes as a disappointment to fans who were expecting the feature, especially after "Forza Horizon 2," an open-world racing game for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One, was announced to have support for cross-platform play.
However, Ayoub did not dismiss the possibility of it coming to the "Halo" franchise.
"Cross-play is something we're excited about potentially down the line and we're looking at that for the franchise, but in the 'Halo Wars 2' timeframe, we're focusing on Play Anywhere," he said.
In other news, 343 Industries revealed that the two main characters shown in the E3 trailer were different from 2009's "Halo Wars" version of the main characters Cutter and Andres.
The developer detailed in a Halo Waypoint blog post that they are different "for both casting and technical reasons." 343 explained that the characters were created in 2008 using 2007 technology, which "looked fantastic at that time."
Since then, they have leaped forward to attain the end result, which they claim to be better in terms of immersion in the story and credibility.