Halo 5 won’t come to PC

Xbox looking forward, not backward

Halo 5

With Microsoft talking more and more about having games that were marketed as Xbox exclusives going to PC some might have started to worry that ALL Xbox exclusives would come to PC eventually. That probably won't be the case

During the Q&A session of  at Microsoft's //Build/ 2016 PC Gamer snapped up the question on whether or not Halo 5 would come to PC, and Phil Spencer answered both for Halo 5 and for all games in general.

Phil Spencer said that games would release for the suitable platform, he used the RTS Ashes of the Singularity as an example to show that some games aren't really suitable for consoles even though mouse and keyboard support will come for the Xbox One. His exact words were

"If I enable keyboard and mouse on a console – which we will do – and then you download [Ashes of the Singularity] and you’re playing on a monitor, is that a PC game or a console game? I get out of saying ‘all,’ because I think there are games that people want to play in front of their monitor with a keyboard and mouse, and I want to be somebody that builds those games."

Halo 5 multiplayer

Then Spencer gave a few examples on games that works just fine on both PC and Xbox like Rise of the Tomb Raider, Forza 6, and Quantum Break. But again he was clear that making a game available for both PC and consoles would not be mandatory

"I don’t want to make it some kind of artificial mandate, because then I think we end up with ‘Frankengames’, games that really weren't meant for a certain platform. And because some suit said, ‘Hey, everything’s gotta run on both platforms’, you end up with something people don’t want. You should expect it when franchises look like they belong on both platforms, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a mandate for the studios because it’s not."

After some more talking Spencer went back to the original question, whether PC gamers would get to play Halo 5 on a PC. Short answer was "no-ish" the longer one was:

"In terms of Halo FPS on PC, I think there’s a ton of opportunity for us right now, but I don’t want to get into a world where we’re looking back, like at Halo 5. It doesn’t mean there’s nothing there that could ever end up on PC, but I’d much rather look forward with what our plans are."

In my humble opinion it is a good thing that Xbox and Microsoft is looking forward instead of backwards, focusing on making the new games available for both PC and Xbox instead of porting old exclusives. After all, Halo 5 was developed solely for consoles in mind, not a single thought of PC is in the Halo 5 code. The same principle will most likely go for all older Xbox exclusives since they all were made with consoles in mind, not PC.

Source: PC Gamer