Halo 2 coming to Vista

Posted: February 9, 2006 @ 9:02 am (3 hours, 28 minutes ago) By: Major Nelson

Not many details (ummm…release date?) but here is the press release that just went out a few moments ago.

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Master Chief Dual-Wields His Way to Windows Vista

“Halo 2,” the award-winning sequel to the instant classic “Halo: Combat Evolved” to make its PC debut on the Windows Vista platform

”Halo 2,” the game that redefined first-person combat and multiplayer action for millions of gamers worldwide, is set to explode onto PCs exclusively for Windows Vista. ”Halo 2” for Windows Vista will be developed by a dedicated Microsoft Game Studios team in partnership with Bungie Studios.

Only for Windows Vista, “Halo 2″ will offer gamers both the single-player campaign and multiplayer experience of the original, as well as the additional maps offered in the “Halo 2 Multiplayer Map Pack.” Gamers will also have the exciting opportunity to build, create and customize their own multiplayer levels.

“Halo: Combat Evolved” and its sequel, “Halo 2,” have achieved phenomenal success on the Xbox video game platform as gamers around the world follow the saga of Master Chief in his battle against the Covenant forces. In 2003, the original “Halo” roared onto Windows PCs. In “Halo 2” for Windows Vista, the action picks up where the first game ended. Master Chief, with the help of a small group of marines, has destroyed the religious artifact and artificial world known as “Halo,” and is making his way back to Earth. There, he and the last surviving Earth forces will mount a titanic struggle against the marauding Covenant enemy. To date, the Halo franchise has sold more than 14.5 million games worldwide with over 600 million hours of multiplayer action logged across Microsoft’s Xbox Live online gaming service.

Halo What on the Whatnow?


Halo 2, on Windows Vista. Halo 2, you may remember, is a "shoot them up" featuring the adventures of Master Chief and his wacky sidekick, Cortana. Well, Halo 2 you know about, but Vista, what the heck is that?

Windows Vista is the next generation Microsoft operating system that will by turns, be sweet, awesome, radical, and potentially translucent (in places). It will also add layers of new functionality, speed, media processing and so on. I have heard a rumor, in fact, that it will replicate a lot of the functionality of them new-fangled Media Center PCs so that you can stream HD and whatnot to your Xbox 360. If that's true, that would also be nice.

The game WILL be for Windows Vista, as in, not for Windows XP, so you have a while to get used to that and complain to me about what a jerk I am to Windows 3.1 users.


But back to Halo 2. We're working with another team at MS to make this not only happen, but happen in a super-sweet radical fashion. To that end, we're going to be helping with a lot of aspects, but don't worry, we are not doing the actual coding work – we're too busy with ONP (Our Next Project). In fact, a lot of you spotted the job postings at Bungie.net asking for, "programmers who are awesome at programming Halo 2 Xbox to work on a PC," and other subtle clues.

Using your Sherlock Holmes-ian powers of deduction, you probably figured it out. Anyway, there will be significant differences between the PC and the Xbox version. The PC for example, invariably runs at resolutions that aren't 480i. So there's that. The specs and features have been targeted, but not carved in stone, and things will change, so we're NOT going to announce anything more specific than you find here today.

One HUGE difference between Xbox and PC versions is the absence of Xbox Live. Now, much as a subset of you likes to bitch and moan about Live matchmaking, most of you agree it's a very nice way to find games in a hurry. But don't worry, we'll have a cool system for that, no doubt.

There will also be some kind of map-customization ability. Does that mean you can build your own maps from scratch, pixel by pixel, importing your own textures, scripts and detailed shaders? Or does it mean one empty room and a crate? Well, we'll have more news on that later this year, but it will be cool, we guarantee that.

There's loads of questions the Bungie faithful will ask, like, "Will there be a Mac version?" We can't answer that yet. It's not out of the question, but it's not definitely happening either. We promise to keep you posted.


UPDATE: We'll answer your questions in more depth in today's Weekly Update.