So no matchmaking, what about custom games? It seems pretty unlikely for the same reason (about which things are connected to which), but maybe they could rig up something where the dedicated server is the host, and just do everything else like before? But then why not have that as an option otherwise...? :/ Maybe it's a consistency or quality thing, and they'd be OK with letting it happen in custom games, where people are opting in and are more ready for wonkiness? Not letting people with different versions of the games play together would put a real damper on this being the be-all end-all of custom games in Halo, but I should have thought of this issue before; I mean, if they did it for Halo 3 and 4, why not Halo 1 and 2? But then they'd have to deal with emulation, and what about letting people play between them on the original Xbox? Each of those options probably add a whole other layer of issues, but people would be wonder why there's cross-play for Halo 3 and 4 and not the other ones, and not understand or not accept the layering of difficulties involved.... :\ At least I can take this as further evidence they were wrong to not have any backwards compatibility for this new console of theirs. :/