If we had a penny for all the Halo E3 demos to be made publicly available, we’d have two pennies (Microsoft)
Months after the original Halo 2 E3 2003 demo was made available to the public, a second demo has surfaced online – but not from Microsoft.
Last November, Microsoft and 343 Industries (or Halo Studios as it’s now called) celebrated the 20th anniversary of Halo 2 by releasing a playable version of the game’s E3 2003 demo.
It was a great treat for long-time Xbox fans and the perfect way to celebrate Halo 2’s anniversary, but it looks like that’s not the only E3 demo for the game to make its way online.
This week, somebody managed to come across a different multiplayer build for Halo 2 that was shown during E3 2004 and has uploaded it online as a free download for preservation purposes.
The person responsible is X user Stian Schultz, a translator and video game store owner in Norway, who found the demo on an Xbox debug kit. They don’t say exactly how they came to acquire it, but they did admit to spending approximately $5,000 (roughly £4,100) on it.
They managed to upload the build to the Internet Archive, meaning anyone is free to download it. Although it apparently requires an original Xbox and is rather barebones, containing only Halo 2’s Zanzibar map.
Being an old demo meant for demonstrating the game at public events, it was never going to be feature rich. But this will certainly catch the attention of diehard Halo fans and preservationists.
Something similar happened this past November when a group of fans archived 90s shooters Unreal and Unreal Tournament, which had been delisted for years. Although in that instance they had permission from publisher Epic Games.
This Halo 2 demo has been uploaded without approval from Microsoft, but they’re unlikely to object. (If this had been Nintendo it might’ve been a different story.)
As for the officially released 2003 demo, if you’ve yet to try it yourself, it’s available as a Steam Workshop download, though you obviously need to own Halo 2 to access it.
It’s a strange time to be a Halo fan. 2021’s Halo Infinite has continued to receive updates and new content for its multiplayer mode, but there’s been hide nor hair of a new game.
After suffering layoffs in 2023 and rumours of it being removed from the Halo series, 343 Industries cemented its continued commitment to Halo by rebranding itself to Halo Studios in October. It also revealed it had multiple Halo games in development, but stopped short of saying what any of them are.
Since then, Microsoft’s begun embracing the idea of bringing its Xbox exclusive titles to other platforms, and it’s strongly rumoured older Halo games will see ports to both the PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2.
Future Halo games will be made using Unreal Engine 5 (Microsoft)
Rare Halo 2 E3 demo found on an Xbox devkit sold for over £4,000