The explosive gunplay of Halo 5: Guardians, particularly its new Warzone online mode, made a nice showing at this month's Electronic Entertainment Expo, but the game's developers at 343 also disappointed fans with a June backtrack on a prior promise. The game's campaign mode will revolve around four-player co-op play, but players who want to team up with friends in that campaign will need to hop online—meaning, no split-screen campaign options for friends on the same couch.

On Sunday afternoon, the backtracking continued for Halo fans who like to play split-screen versus modes on the same screen. A Halo fan on Twitter, named Ben Van Riper, took a screencap of Halo 5's Xbox One pre-order listing, which currently lists a one-player limit on a single console, along with a "2-24 player" count for online multiplayer.

https://twitter.com/bengvr3/status/615232473438547968

One of that tweet's recipients, 343 Industries head Josh Holmes, replied with what appeared to be a vague confirmation: "All multiplayer modes use full screen on dedicated servers, including Co-op Campaign, Arena, and Warzone" (abbreviations spelled out).

That combination of the official preorder listing and the lack of hard denial from a 343 developer points to the end of a long, long era for the Halo series—every Halo first-person shooter, including last year's Master Chief Collection, supported local, split-screen, multiplayer combat. In fact, the games had all also previously supported LAN play, and users at the NeoGAF gaming forum expressed concerns that Holmes' statement—particularly its "dedicated servers" comment—spelled a death knell for LAN support.

Shortly before E3, the development team at 343 Industries had offered one major olive branch for Halo 5 multiplayer fans: a promise of "over 15" free downloadable versus maps for all players, as opposed to making players pay for either map packs or a "season pass."

Update: A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to Ars Technica that Halo 5: Guardians will not support any form of split-screen multiplayer, nor will the game natively support LAN play. "The decision [to remove all split-screen modes] was an extremely difficult one for the team, but one that was necessary to deliver the biggest Halo game to date," the representative wrote in a statement. "343’s focus is to ensure that fans get the best Halo experience yet, and the team felt a split-screen experience would compromise the gameplay design and the visual bar they’ve set."

The representative pointed out that Halo: MCC was not built with LAN support, as well, but we have found that LAN connectivity can be used in that game so long as all connected Xbox One consoles are also connected to Xbox Live via Wi-Fi.