343 Industries is trying something odd with the Halo franchise, announcing today that it plans to launch the Halo 5: Guardians “Forge” editiing tools — but not the game itself — on Windows 10 later this year.
That’s interesting both because the main Halo series hasn’t had a presence on PC in over ten years (since Halo 2 was released for Windows Vista in 2004) and because it lends further credence to Xbox chief Phil Spencer’s statements earlier this year about Microsoft’s vision for its cross-platform future.
“We think it’s critical that these user-bases stay connected, regardless of the device they’re playing on,” said Spencer, by way of explaining why the Xbox Live SDK was being integrated into Windows 10.
Now 343 seems to be making use of that functionality, as it describes the upcoming PC release, Forge — Halo 5: Guardians Edition, as being capable of publishing creations through to the Xbox One ecosystem.
The Forge PC app is pitched as being completely free, with a modified UI as well as mouse/keyboard support, and capable of building anything that can be built in Halo 5’s extant Forge mode. It’s yet unclear what, if any, further plans 343 has for PC game or app development.