Microsoft announced this week that Halo is making the jump to PlayStation with Halo: Campaign Evolved, a full-fledged remake of the Halo: Combat Evolved campaign. With 4K visuals, updated animations, remastered music, and re-recorded voice lines, the legendary campaign that kicked off the iconic franchise will finally be playable on PS5 (as well as Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, and Steam) in 2026.
While Halo: Combat Evolved initially stood out for its cinematic storytelling and action-packed campaign, it was the local multiplayer and LAN battles — those epic all-night gaming sessions where we’d face off in versus matches — that many of us remember most fondly.
Halo: Campaign Evolved will still support two-player local split screen on console, and will even expand to include four player online co-op across Xbox, PC, and PlayStation 5 for its campaign. But the big question many of us have is whether or not it will feature proper competitive multiplayer.
And the answer to that is, unfortunately, no. Halo: Campaign Evolved will not include competitive multiplayer, either locally or online. Halo Studios didn't really bring up competitive multiplayer in the initial announcement or its interview on Xbox Wire, but IGN did ask Executive Producer Damon Conn about the possibility.
Perhaps expecting the question, Conn reportedly gave a "media-trained answer," according to IGN, stating that the team is “very focused on recreating the original campaign that started it all” and “[Halo] Infinite and [Master Chief Collection] provide really great experiences for multiplayer.”
Unfortunately, neither Halo Infinite nor Halo: The Master Chief Collection is available on PlayStation 5. It’s speculated that the developers either didn’t want to draw players away from The Master Chief Collection, or simply didn’t have enough time to include it in a 2026 release, which coincides with Halo’s 25th anniversary.
Halo: Combat Evolved laid the groundwork for competitive console play, but it wasn’t until Halo 2 in 2004 that online multiplayer truly took off, helping define Xbox Live and the competitive console FPS genre. In that sense, it makes sense that the focus of Halo: Campaign Evolved would be solely on the legendary story that started it all.
“We wanted to start where it all began, with the original campaign that defined Halo,” Conn told Xbox Wire. “Starting here means people that have never played the game before will be able to understand the story from the very beginning, and that can help us chart a course forward with new Halo stories.”
“Focusing on the campaign experience means we can concentrate fully on really capturing the atmosphere, tone – the emotional impact of what made the first campaign so special and iconic," he added.
So, while Halo: Combat Evolved won’t include competitive multiplayer, if the game performs well on PlayStation, there’s a chance that Xbox could release future Halo titles that do.