It used to be that if a first-person shooter had multiplayer, it probably had a split-screen option as well. This was back before the internet was so readily available and you had to go to a friend’s house to play a game with them. These days, multiplayer has moved from the couch and onto the internet.
Despite this move, the Halo series has always served as a pillar of local split-screen play. That is, until this mode was oddly missing from the latest entry Buy Now . On Thursday, during a speech at the annual DICE Summit, Microsoft confirmed the Halo series will be bringing back split-screen modes in all future titles.
“We will always have split-screen support going forward,” 343 Industries chief Bonnie Ross told the crowd. What has yet to be confirmed is whether this statement applies to cooperative or competitive modes. Additionally, there was no clarification on how split-screen modes might work with the Xbox Play Anywhere model. Will Windows 10 users be able to play with others on a console?
When Halo 5 was released, fans were vocal about the absence of any local multiplayer options. Both the versus modes and the main campaign features four-player battling, yet this feature was strictly available online. What made this omission even more surprising was that 343 developers told fans during development that Halo 5 would include split-screen modes. It wasn’t until later in development that they walked back on that statement.
During Ross’ speech, she admitted that fan outcry was significant. “It was incredibly painful for the community and for us.” She event went as far to say the removal of split-screen “eroded trust” with their fanbase.
While Halo 6 has yet to be formally announced, it’s not surprising that 343 Industries is hard at work on another entry. The franchise stands as one of the biggest properties owned by Microsoft.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.