While the upcoming Halo: Spartan Assault might seem an odd fit for the Xbox One and Xbox 360, with its twin-stick gameplay, it’s part of a bigger initiative to make sure that the franchise is available for as many formats as possible, which includes both digital and physical. Or so Halo: Spartan Assault lead designer Mike Ellis stated to Venture Beat.
“343′s looking to have Halo experiences in as many formats as possible. You can look through our portfolio now. We have games. We have books on the New York Times bestseller list. We have toys and things like Mega Blocks and McFarlane figures. Halo is bigger than any one game. We see it as an entire universe of experiences.
“The games have a lot of the same values. A lot of the building blocks of the core gameplay are the same. It was just a matter making sure that this version of the game was appropriately native to the console. We went in and looked at it as if it was a console game from the ground up, and evaluated what changes needed to be made to make it a successful console shooter.
“If you’re a casual gamer who’s never experienced playing on a console, you might be happier with the phone or tablet versions. A PC gamer would be more comfortable with a keyboard and mouse. Our console fans should be very happy with the controller.”
Regardless of whether it’s a first person shooter or not, Ellis feels that games like Spartan Assault fit right in with the Halo universe. “We’ve created a game that looks like Halo, sounds like Halo, and plays like Halo. We see it as another part of the Halo universe.”
Halo: Spartan Assault releases on December 24th for the Xbox One. It will release for Xbox 360 in January 2014.
