Where Did All the Split-Screen Multiplayer Games Go?

Split-screen was once a standard feature in nearly every multiplayer game, but times have changed. Playing online is easier than ever, whereas playing with people in the same room has become one of gaming’s greatest challenges.

Split-Screen Has Changed, but Not for the Better

It’s easy to take split-screen multiplayer for granted, but it’s long been an important feature for a wide variety of genres. Whereas some genres like fighting games and 2D brawlers were designed for players to share the same perspective, many others relied on split-screen to give each player a unique point-of-view.

We can thank split-screen multiplayer for being able to sit with our friends and family to enjoy exhilarating racing games, open-ended sandbox games, and disgusting amounts of screen-cheating in competitive shooting games.

Unfortunately, many prominent series that once set the bar for split-screen multiplayer have neglected it in their most recent installments. The Halo series—which was once praised for its excellent inclusion of split-screen campaigns—scrapped the feature for the campaign mode in Halo 5 and Halo Infinite.

Both games have split-screen for multiplayer, but its absence from the campaigns is one of the most disappointing aspects of the modern Halo entries. Other series have kept split-screen multiplayer alive, but with significant concessions.

Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero technically features local multiplayer, much like previous Dragon Ball fighting games, but the mode only allowed you to play on its basic training stage until a recent update added a complete stage select. Before this update, you could only access Sparking! Zero‘s 11 other stages in multiplayer by downloading mods to use them in split-screen mode or settle for online multiplayer matches.

Similarly, the Call of Duty series features split-screen functionality, but its inclusion now seems like an afterthought due to lackluster implementation. In past entries, playing with other people via split-screen was a simple process that only required you to connect another controller to your system. Some previous Call of Duty games allowed up to four people to play on the same screen.

This is not the case for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Its split-screen function is limited to only two players, cannot be used offline, and is absent from the game’s last-gen console versions. Black Ops 6 also requires both players to sign in to their own Activision accounts, meaning you can’t use guest profiles, unlike in previous installments.

The lackluster state of split-screen multiplayer in modern games can be partially blamed on the feature’s declining popularity. Online multiplayer has taken over as the main means for people to play together, making split-screen a lot less important than it used to be.

Whereas split-screen multiplayer used to be a must-have feature for most competitive games, it’s now a minor convenience that most players ignore. As a result, developers have little incentive to continue supporting split-screen multiplayer in their games, causing many recent releases to neglect the feature entirely.

Split-Screen Is Demanding on Modern Systems

Split-screen modes have never been easy to implement, and newer games have only made them tougher to develop. Video games rely on your system’s graphics processing unit (GPU) to consistently render every object and environmental detail in the player’s view. This not only involves displaying the shapes of each object, but also their individual textures, lighting, and any other elements that may influence their appearance.

With single-player or online multiplayer games, your system only needs to render details from your camera angle. However, split-screen multiplayer games need to render the details of two (or more) player cameras simultaneously, which puts a lot of extra strain on the hardware.

If your system isn’t equipped to handle this extra demand, you might experience severe frame rate drops or other performance issues. Some games attempt to alleviate these problems by lowering their resolution and graphics quality in split-screen multiplayer modes. But even with scaled-down visuals, split-screen is much more demanding on your hardware than a traditional single-player experience.

As the standards for video game graphics and performance have increased, split-screen functionality has become much more challenging to implement. Most modern AAA games push the limits of their hardware with complex lighting techniques and photorealistic graphics while also aiming for consistent performance at high frame rates.

It’s already tough for current-gen hardware to handle a single angle, but trying to render at least twice the amount of objects at the same level of detail is too much for most systems to handle. For some games, delivering a functioning split-screen experience requires developers to settle for severely downgraded graphics—mainly by disabling advanced visual effects such as ray tracing and post-processing—or maintain the game’s visual quality at the cost of performance.

Modern Split-Screen Is Possible, But Not Always Practical

Despite the challenges that prevent many games from adding local co-op, modders have demonstrated that many recent multiplayer games are actually perfectly capable of supporting split-screen. It took months for Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero to add an official stage select to its split-screen mode, but fans had already modded the feature into the game after only a day. Halo 5 and Infinite were similarly modded to add split-screen co-op to their campaigns.

In most cases, split-screen modes are only omitted because the developers decided not to work on them, though this isn’t due to a lack of effort. Online matches are the main way most people play modern multiplayer games, which has encouraged developers to prioritize online experiences over other modes.

Even with lackluster single-player modes or poorly implemented split-screen, the popularity of online multiplayer is enough to support a game for years. Because of this, developers are more likely to invest their time and resources refining online features, rather than spending them on implementing features like a split-screen mode.

That doesn’t mean it’s impossible for developers to flesh out both online and local multiplayer modes, as proven by games like Baldur’s Gate 3. But time and budgetary limitations make this incredibly difficult and hardly worth the extra effort. Instead, most modern multiplayer games offer the bare minimum for split-screen, if they include the feature at all.

Split-Screen Isn’t Dead

While there are many examples of poorly implemented split-screen modes, it’d be a disservice to ignore the countless other games that have kept local multiplayer alive. In addition to the aforementioned Baldur’s Gate 3, co-op games like Hazelight Studios’ A Way Out and It Takes Two showcase the creative possibilities that split-screen experiences can provide. Family-friendly games like Nintendo Switch Sports and Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga provide similarly entertaining experiences that all ages can enjoy.

Even though AAA studios have been neglecting split-screen multiplayer, there’s still no shortage of fantastic couch co-op games to play with your friends and family.