“When you think about Halo, it’s such a tailor-made experience for Esports. Especially with that competitive edge, getting back to the level playing field and everything,” 343 Industries’ Josh Holmes said. “So we put a lot of focus on surrounding features.”
“(Spectators) can go in and (watch) any of your friends’ matches in the Beta; you can flip between first person and third person. So if you want to cast, you can go do that in a Twitch stream.”
“(343 Industries will) take (Twitch) streams from top players that are playing, and bundle them up and spotlight them so you can go into the Halo channel and browse through matches, and tune into that.”
“(Casters can) rewind and fast-forward through the match, assuming that you’re tuning in if there’s a bit of a delay. So, if you want to go back and replay a specific moment, you can do that within the controls. We’re looking at deepening those controls for launch, but we want to get that there for Beta so we can put it in the hands of players.”
Looking at Halo 5’s rank system one can easily notice that it was designed with Esports in mind as well. 343 Industries’ rank system will consider the top 200 ranked players in the world as professional players.
“It’s a seven-tier system, so it goes from Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, through the ages. The cool thing is that the last two tiers are called Semi-Pro and Pro, so it’s actually integrated into the game,” said 343 Industries Creative Director Timothy Longo.
We reached out to Sundance DiGiovanni, the CEO of Major League Gaming (MLG) and asked what he thought about Halo declaring 200 players professionals. He responded with a smiley face, “No comment.”
I think we can all agree that any efforts made by any developer to help support the growth of Esports is a win.
The real question is, how much power has 343 lost with the Halo Master Chief Collection? Will the Haloites run out and jump on Halo 5 on release? Or will you wait to find out how the servers are?
Halo 5
