Halo 5: Guardians Will Have Dedicated Servers

Josh Holmes, Halo 5: Guardians‘ Studio Head, gave us some interesting information yesterday about the future of Halo 5‘s multiplayer.

While he was answering a few questions on Team Beyond’s discussion forum, a member asked if we would have dedicated servers for all games instead of using peer-to-peer servers.

For those that don’t know, with peer-to-peer (or P2P), a single player is chosen to host the game, which is usually the player with the best connection. Because everything that happens in the game happens on the host’s console first, the host has an advantage over the other players.

Having dedicated servers removes that advantage, because instead of having a game hosted by a player, it is hosted by Microsoft’s servers. This will make the games in Halo 5 MP a lot more balanced.

So I’m sure you can imagine our enthusiasm when Holmes responded:

“We only have dedicated servers for MP in Halo 5: Guardians. That’s true for matchmaking AND customs. There is no P2P.”

Fans of the Halo-franchise have been requesting this feature for years. What we didn’t expect was to have dedicated servers for custom matches as well, which is a very pleasant surprise.

Of course, there is a downside to this. (There always is.)

Having dedicated servers for custom matches means fairer matches, but it also means that playing custom games becomes impossible if Microsoft’s servers go down. This is risky. But the trade-off will definitely be worth it.