Halo 2 PC Vista Only, With Exclusive Content

Via 1up and Kotaku, news from the most recent Bungie weekly update. Work on Halo 2 PC is continuing apace, but players looking forward to the game should know a few things. The game looks to be Vista only and, despite the promise of the 'Live Anywhere' concept, will not be interconnected in the way that the Shadowrun game will be. The Bungie update clarifies on these announcements. From the article: "Will I need a DirectX 10 graphics card to run Halo 2 on PC? No. Although you will require Windows Vista to play Halo 2 on a PC, you won't necessarily need to upgrade your graphics card to do it. Halo 2, like some other Vista titles, will work just fine on a wide range of graphics cards, including DX9 cards. We will provide far more detailed minimum hardware requirements closer to the game's completion."

Wait a second...

[Donniedarkness]

Weren't we JOKING about them making Halo 3 Vista-only to boost sales? Now they're gonna do this with freaking Halo 2? I don't even like the Halo series, but I see no reason that it wouldn't be able to run on XP, other than the fact that M$ wants to improve sales of Vista. Dammit, Microsoft must be reading Slashdot... Stop giving them ideas, guys!

Re:Fanboys

[Anonymous Coward]

.. the 5 halo fanboys who are willing to drop hundreds on a new OS but weren't willing to pay $200 for an xbox?

I'm more interested...

[Bieeanda]

In when non-MS games will start to require DX10. I really don't care for Halo, so I'm not concerned about it being a Vista-only title. The real fun will be when DX10 comes out, and developers will have to start worrying about whether to risk alienating customers by using it exclusively, or forego any improvements it brings in order to stick with the widely accepted (and not Vista-exclusive) DX9. This isn't like DVD-only games, where the push came at the cost of drives that had already dropped to the price of an average game, or the performance gains brought by laying out a few hundred for a new video card-- it's paying several hundred bucks for a new OS (while XP is still very much supported) and pretty much having to flatten and reinstall in order to play a blasted game in the first place.

And while I'm here, Halo 2 and Shadowrun? Christ almighty. Halo PC was one of the most atrocious ports that I've had the misfortune of dealing with, and Shadowrun is shaping up to be an ugly, me-too squad-based FPS. Some great incentives there, guys. Really.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:XP Patch?

[Fittysix]

As a matter of curiosity, I took the sol.exe from a vista beta machine, and tried to run it on XP. I expected it wouldn't run due to some missing dependancies or something, but to my surprise it said that the EXE was not a valid win32 executable. It appears they've already implimented whatever the method is, and although I didn't investigate the matter any further I'm guessing by the error that this is a fairly complex matter, possibly beyond the ability of a simple patch/crack.

look at the bright side

[rabbot]

At least they are trying this crap with Halo 2 and not a good PC FPS. Let's hope it doesn't work out too well for them so they don't do it with something us PC fans actually care about.