Board Thread:Destiny Forum/@comment-8119622-20130612164523/@comment-220.239.113.90-20140307003406

Okay. I've read most of the posts here. I'd like to add my $2. I'm a games programmer, currently working on a bullet-hell shooter with Tribus Studios. From what I know of actual fact, Bungie would most certainly want to put split-screen into Destiny. The reason split-screen worked so easily in campaigns for Halo was because the screen was receiving information directly from the console. That's easy to do. In multiplayer, a lot of the textures and meshes were on the disk, so you still have no real problems. Occasionally, people would get lag, but not extreme amounts. When you deal with a huge world or series of worlds like in Destiny, most of the data has to be stored in the servers, simply because there is too much to put on a disk of any storage capacity, particularly with the level of detail in the game. This creates problems. The console has to constantly receive information from the servers, and while the console might, be able to handle this for a single player, trying to do it for two players might be beyond the capabilities of the consoles, particularly the Xbox 360 and PS3. In my opinion, the Xbox One and PS4 might be able to handle the data required for two players, but even then it's a stretch. Personally, I'm playing it safe and have two Xbox 360's and I've preordered two copies of Destiny, so I can play with my brother.

In the end, Bungie will always want to make their games split-screen, because that's what they love. That was one of the main goals they made when they started designing the game, years before the whole studio got on board. They wanted to make a huge, open-world game that you can play with your friends, because that was how they wanted to play it. In the end, though, they are restricted by the capabilities of the servers that they use, and the consoles themselves. If they render the video in the servers, they have to rent more servers from Sony and Microsoft, but they could possibly do split-screen with only minor lag. If they have to send the data to the consoles to then be rendered, the consoles might not be capable of running the data for two players. It's a tough call, but Bungie hasn't made a bad game so far, so I trust them to keep up their standards.