- Spencer said in San Francisco as he took questions from journalists during promotion for Halo 5:
"In the end, the teams make decisions based on the bar that they want to hit for complexity of what they're going to run on a single box. We see the robustness of what Xbox Live is today and where people are playing across Xbox Live--you at your house, me at our house. We know that's the vast majority of the co-op play", Spencer had to say about this matter.
"With Halo 5, the team really wanted to focus on making that experience great, both visually on the screen that you're looking at, and all the systems in place. While I loved the split screen of Halo 1, obviously it was kind of how multiplayer in Halo was born, I think the team made a trade-off based on what they see happening in the market today and what they wanted to do with their game.
We obviously don't know for machines that don't connect, but yeah. When you look at where most of the multiplayer happens in games, Live (is the place) just because it's so easy. I don't have to have somebody at my house. I love the nostalgia of the couch co-op of what Halo did in the past, but I also know in the realities of the day with people's busy lives, it's not as easy to get everybody in the same physical place. It's one of the advantages that Xbox Live obviously offers."
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/xbox-interview-phil-spencer-on-halo-the-future-of-/1100-6430815/
Nintendo is selling their IPs to Microsoft and this is true because:
http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=221391&page=1