In a devastating blow to the PC community, EA has broke the news that no PC gamer wanted to hear. Star Wars: Battlefront will not offer support for split-screen co-op on PC. A sad day indeed. And yes, I am being sarcastic…
Split-screen co-op will be available on both Xbox One and PlayStation however, as expected.
In a Q&A posted on the Star Wars: Battlefront website, EA stated, “Split-screen will be available for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One only.” However you can only play split-screen during Missions, the only mode which supports co-op split-screen.
Although it isn’t a surprise that EA have opted not to include split-screen co-op, is reinforces that PC gaming is still viewed differently by publishers and developers, compared to console gaming, despite Valve and others attempts at making PC gaming even more mainstream by moving the platform into your living room. With Steam Machines and the Steam Link launching later this year, more and more PC gamers will take to playing their machines on their TV where co-op split-screen would certainly work and be useful.
Source: EA
Via: PC Gamer
8 Comment
Hold on. Split-screen Coop was popular on PC?
And here I thought this was a Console-popularized feature
Personally, I think it is a lot more popular than you would think. Even from my experience I have found myself looking for games with split-screen when I just want to play local co-op, something I do miss since moving over to the PC. However with Steam pushing for the PC to become more of a living room form of entertainment, who knows whether or not in the future we will see more games having split-screen co-op for the PC.
Although for Star Wars, it would only make up a small chunk of the game anyway so it probably isn’t that much of a miss. I wonder how widely used it will be on consoles?
I would need statistics to reinforce it rather than individuals preferences 😛 Course. As all I remember with my old PC days is any friends, or my brothers friends who’d want to play multiplayer or the like with eachother, would set up a LAN party – ‘Split-screen’ was if we went to the N64 to play Goldeneye or Perfect Dark.
I’ve never really ever heard of split-screen popularization of any sort, in any way, until ‘now’, so as Niche as it is as a feature, which was solidified as a means to play on the couch and in a way that Nintendo keeps in mind as their ideology of ‘Family/Couch Gaming System/Entertainment’. I just don’t see it as a feature people would care about, since most PC’s are on a chair or office chair rather than a couch for multiple people, unless you got some fat love-chair at your computer for a partner. lol Only other instances of local-coop on PC is never with a split-screen, but are with games that have a single shared-screen, like Spelunky, for instance.
Sorry, I don’t have statistics 🙁 Maybe I should start a poll and find out? haha. Although I was looking at other outlets and N4G and there more than a few comments saying how split-screen shouldn’t be console only. It will never be as popular as it would be on consoles that’s for sure as my set-up, or chair, just isn’t big enough to accomadate it on a regular basis 😛 Still, I think to me it shows that publishers and developers still view the PC as different to what perhaps Valve for example does where they are trying to bring the platform inline with consoles by being in the living room. Although you could probably sense through my sarcasm in the article that Star Wars: Battlefront is probably not the game which needs or could even do with split-screen on the PC.
Would have to be a really good poll that stretches across a lot of communities and variable websites and get a good few thousand for an accurate result 😛
Well, N4G users are generally overly-self-entitled so I never take much of what the users have to say beyond a grain of salt :L
And Aye. I just think PC will continue its Local Coop as it is, there are so many Local coop games that still of course exist, it’s just they never at a massive majority attempt to do split screen, it’s almost always Shared-screen in every example. Never had any problems with that especially, same for any Fighting game too.
People have such a misconception that PC gamers only play sat alone in front of a PC monitor at a desk, it’s so easy to play PC games on a TV or something else, I have a 150″ projector screen and simple use a 20m HDMI cable and 20m USB cable to play PC games from the PC in one room to the projector in another room.
LET’s get our voices heard! https://www.change.org/p/ea-games-make-split-screen-coop-for-pc-available-on-battlefront?recruiter=375894468&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink
Nice, I signed it and shared it on facebook/twitter