Splitgate May Have Gotten A PlayStation Bump From Halo Infinite

The arena shooter Splitgate drew immediate comparisons to old-school Halo multiplayer when it released in beta last summer. But while the release of Halo Infinite's free-to-play multiplayer could have been an existential threat for Splitgate, 1047 co-founder Ian Proulx thinks it might have actually helped the game's popularity.

Proulx told The Loadout that he was "never worried" about Halo eating into Splitgate sales, and in fact Halo seems to have given Splitgate a nice boost on PlayStation. Proulx said that the Splitgate player count on PlayStation has gone up since Halo Infinite launched in November, possibly suggesting that PlayStation owners went looking for a similar arena shooter experience.

"I'm actually glad [Halo Infinite] is out," he said. "I honestly think that, in the long run, Halo Infinite and Splitgate will help each other. I think that there's just so much noise and so many battle royales right now, and [these two games] are bringing people over to the arena shooter genre. You know, there’s a lot of kids who have never played Halo, right? There’s a lot of kids who have never played Quake or Unreal Tournament. They've never played this kind of game. And getting them exposure to that I think is just a good thing for the genre as a whole."

Splitgate was commonly described as "Halo meets Portal," with arena shooting mechanics that resemble the Halo series and the added twist of the ability to stick teleporting gates on certain walls. Those two elements combined add some strategic wrinkles, like the ability to get a drop on that sniper across the map by simply opening a gate nearby.