We were all shocked to learn that Halo Infinite would not be launching with campaign co-op last year. It would be the first time in the series long history the staple feature would be missing. And now the disappointment is going to continue. After initially telling folks that campaign co-op would be added as part of "Season 2" in May of this year...we are going to have to wait longer.

While Halo Infinite doesn't officially have co-op, there's at least some codebase in the game that supports it. Likely the reason it's delayed is still to iron out some bugs, glitches, and overall balance - but at the very least some folks on Reddit managed to figure out a way to bring in another player for two player split-screen co-op in Halo Infinite.

For the first time in the entire series history, a Halo game will launch without official co-op support. Halo Infinite officially launches on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series today but the game's co-op mode won't be out until sometime next year. 

Halo Infinite, the sequel to the slightly disappointing Halo 5, has seen a somewhat turbulent development period, with a lackluster reception to last year’s preview, a release date delay to 2021, and the departure of several key staff members. The Microsoft and Bethesda Games Showcase recently provided a welcome update on the game, which is now set to arrive in two parts this holiday season.

E3 2021 is the first E3 since Microsoft acquired Bethesda, and today’s Microsoft and Bethesda Games Showcase is the first joint E3 press conference from the two companies. The 90-minute event revealed a number of new and previously announced games that will be coming to Xbox and PC in 2021 and 2022. Naturally, we’re most psyched for the 10 co-op games featured in the showcase.

One of the consistent things every Halo game has had is co-op play. And while it simply started as clones of Master Chief running around in 2 player co-op Halo, the game progressed to integrate it into the story with Halo 2 as the Chief and Arbiter were the focus of that campaign. And with four player co-op being added in Halo 3,  it changed the benchmark for the series. 

Halo Infinite saw its first gameplay reveal today and with it came confirmation that the game will indeed have co-op play. And there was much rejoicing.

I have fond memories of our Halo 3 Firefight nights on Xbox Live. We had huge community participation and hours upon hours and waves upon waves of Covenant to defeat. But when Halo: The Master Chief Collection finally added Halo 3: ODST to its assortment of games, it neglected to add the specific flavor of Firefight we loved.

PC owners of Halo: The Master Chief collection have been getting a steady drip of releases as the team works to bring all content from the Xbox One release onto PC with all the fixins' PC gamers expect. Halo 2 Anniversary is the 3rd full game available following Halo Reach and Halo: Anniversary.

Back in March, we reported that Halo: Reach would be added to the Halo: The Master Chief Collection sometime this year. With just a few weeks left, 343 Industries is fulfilling that promise and Halo: Reach will arrive on the PC and Xbox One on December 3, 2019. On the PC side, this marks the first Master Chief Collection title to arrive on that platform, with the other games in that bundle arriving over the course of the next year.