Halo online in limbo

During its pre-E3 press conference, Microsoft hinted that its upcoming first-party game Halo will be one of three games--the others being Activision's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2X and Infogrames' NASCAR Heat--to have online features at launch. At the time, the specific online plans for Halo were not revealed, but a recent post in the Bungie forums revealed that, given the current state of tools available for the Xbox, actual online play for Halo may not be a possibility.

"Unfortunately, it's not possible for us to code support for Internet play without more info than we have now," wrote Matt Soell of Bungie Software, the studio developing the game. "So the Xbox Halo won't magically work over the Internet when MS gets their networking stuff up. I don't think a patch will happen either."

"A separate product is a possibility, but as things stand right now, there is no definite plan for such a product," Soell added. "The team gets to decide what they work on next, but they won't make that decision until Halo is done."

Halo is currently on schedule for release alongside the November 8 launch of the Xbox.