Yesterday leaked screenshots from the next edition of Electronic Gaming Monthly hit the web. What were people up in arms about? The revelation by Bungie in a June interview that 4-person co-op over XBOX Live will not ship with the final game. It has widely been speculated that 4-person co-op over XBOX Live would in-deed be a killer feature for HALO 3. After all, zealous fans poured through thousands of lines of code after the release of the HALO 3 beta on XBOX Live. Fans saw references that suggested HALO 3 would have 4-person co-op over XBOX Live.

HALO 3 is supposed to the greatest XBOX 360 test to date. At least, that's what we've come to expect from Bungie. Every release of HALO has been just that - the best selling XBOX title to date. Each game ships with features that are not only unique, but influence the first-person shooter genre on other platforms including PC gaming. HALO dominates interactive entertainment. It dominates and innovates.

Many people are pitting HALO 3 up against Gears of War (the best selling XBOX 360 title to date). Gears of War brought a new graphics standard to the table. The styling of Gears of War is something that isn't seen in many games. Besides that, Gears used bump and texture maps to great gorgeous imagery.

Gears of War also featured online cooperative play during the gripping campaign. The ability to play co-op online was revolutionary for a Microsoft title. It was done so well that it added many hours of replay to the game as friends were able to play together through the campaign on four different difficulty levels.

HALO fans noticed. They noticed the outstanding graphics (recall that it has been reported that Microsoft doubled the amount of RAM in the XBOX 360 just to be able to render the graphics in Gears of War) and the online coop.

With the revelation that multiplayer co-op may not ship with HALO 3, many fans are asking "WHY!?!?!?".

Four-person co-op over XBOX Live has got to be an expensive feature. It's vastly more technical than "teleporting the player who's lagging behind to the lead player's position". That's what XBOX 360 Fanboy suggested.

I claim it's not that simple. Besides, the "teleport-to-the-current-location-of-the-leader" feature was always a local solution. It was never done online.

In Gears of War, the environments weren't as interactive as HALO 3's. In fact, HALO 2's environments were more interactive than Gears. In Gears, most objects in the map never moved or changed. The environments didn't destruction. Boxes and pieces of the urban scenery couldn't be moved. Almost entirely, the only objects that could move were the players and they ammunition they fired.

In HALO 3 online co-op netcode would have to transmit the position data for all movable objects in the game. The projectiles coming from the weapons, the boxes, crates, destructible environments, vehicles, the other players, the grenades, and, oh, the scores of enemies that you'll be fighting, their weapons, their projectiles, and their influence on the environments.

And how about throwing in a mix of deployable technology. They'd have to account for not only the Bubble Shields, but the states of the Bubble Shields. And shouldn't we assume that the enemies will also have access to this technology? Maybe that's a stretch?

And it doesn't end there. HALO 3 will have other secondary elements that will take up pressure network bandwidth. Simple things like Jackal shields, stationary shields, plasma blasts, door states, ramp states, and so on.

Example, in HALO PC, we saw that even objects in multiplayer matches got out of sync. In the map "Danger Canyon", stationary shields (like the one's the Jackals use) were spread in the middle of the map. Those shields would disappear if they took enough damage. Over time, the shields should get out of sync between all of the players in the game. On some people's computers, the shields would be powered. On other machines they would be destroyed.

Heck, we even experienced a little bit of this in a recent HALO title, HALO 2. Recall the stationary turrets and how destroying them didn't necessarily mean they were destroyed? Ah - the days of the invisible stationary turret.

My point? In HALO 3, low priority objects would easily get out of sync without the development of revolutionary netcode and bandwidth prioritization.

Bungie has said that online co-op is a huge technical feature. It is! Why do you think other game don't offer online co-op? Look at all of the other developers that have made shooters with campaigns. How many have included online co-op in such an interactive game? I'm waiting...

Many people are bitter about this news. But can you really be disappointed about a feature that we never officially announced? Many people were disappointed in the graphics of the HALO 3 beta. Will they now be disappointed with the lack of online multiplayer?

I have full faith that Bungie’s innovation in HALO 3 will more than make up for any feature that doesn’t make it into the final build.

Wow. All this over leaked images from a yet-to-be-released gaming magazine containing a reference to an interview conducted earlier in the summer. Sheesh.