And note, I’m using the phrase “Halo is dying” EXTREMELY loosely here.
Halo is “dying” for one simple reason. What reason?
The age of the Arena Shooter is over. It ended a long time ago, even before 343 was assigned to Halo.
And is what Halo is; the last of the great Arena Kings. It doesn’t matter how good the game is, was or could’ve been. 343 could’ve created the literally perfect Halo game, and I’d bet money that you’d be seeing numbers decline in an extremely similar way as to how they are now.
Because the Arena Shooter was long, long ago eclipsed by the Call of Duty-styled Arcade Shooter, just as the Arena Shooter had killed the Tactical Shooter before it (or to compare to another genre, how MOBAs murdered the competitive RTS), and how now the Battle Royale has finally put the Arcade Shooter down as the most important and powerful shooter genre, to where even now the almighty CoD must bow at the BR Altar and offer up Warzone, wherein the main-line CoDs now only exist to feed the BR behemoth.
I think we all might do ourselves some good and reflect that as much as we love Halo…Infinite was never going to be, never COULD be anything other than a powerful and enjoyable nostalgia trip no matter how good it was.
It will likely go on and continue to get updates and such and be a good, enjoyable game, but I think we need to face the reality that as a certain Orc once said; “Times change”. And the gaming world has moved on from Arena Shooters being the most important and most popular genre of shooters.
no, there was big hype for this game. People wanted to see more Halo.
343 just botched it and are taking their sweet time trying to pick up the pieces.
As an alternate to your point, 343 added net new customization content to HCE in a modern live service delivery method. They also added net new customization content and new maps to H3 in a modern live service delivery method as well. That’s two of the three most well regarded titles in three franchise. The games were also given 4K and 60/120 FPS updates.
So one could argue 343 did deliver a modern Halo experience that was true to the legacy titles. And in that case MCC got a population bump, but never got close to the consistent player engagement of the top titles.
I’m very interested in seeing how many players return for Season 2 at this point. That’s going to be interesting to analyze
Probably a lot, considering that the bugs we are facing might have fixes by Season 2. With issues being resolved, we should see a rise in playercount once again.
You didn’t include that the game spent a long time being completely busted from launch with atrocious matchmaking issues and bugs. A game that squandered its entire lanuch and sat in a kind of limbo with minor under the hood improvements for a few years would certainly struggle with consistent player engagement. And as MCC sat there busted, we’ve had multiple CoDs, some Battlefields, Halo 5, and all sorts of other games claiming players interests.
The MCC is in a WAY better state now and finally got some of that live service content which gave it a bump as you note. But we don’t know how the game would’ve fared had its state at launch been at least closer (in function/polish) to the state we have now.
I can’t speak for the wider consumer base, but this is definitely true for the boys.
The guys I played with during the Bungie years started to falter with Reach and completely fell off by four. I am the Last Man Standing among that group. We still game together, to be sure. But they’re more interested in social sandboxes like SoT than arena shooters or military sims. Halo didn’t fail them, their tastes just changed.
So idk about the theory on the whole, but I have considered the notion that Halo is just old hat at this point. Who knows.
In my opinion, the over-saturation of a genre is what kills it in the first place. In this case, we have been bombarded with battle royals for about 3-4 years now. Before that, it was the arcade shooter as you’ve mentioned. Now, a fresh arena shooter, especially a well-known one like Halo, is what the shooter fans needed to satisfy that craving. It was a perfect culmination, especially with the way Battlefield 2042 and COD: Vanguard were handled.
Another example to support this trend is the Marvel movie franchise. It peaked with Endgame and now the new Marvel movies are doing good, but not on the same level the movies leading up to Endgame were doing.
My old group was ready to go, but we ran into issues pretty quick.
Crossplay isnt working right. Cant stay in a game together, etc.
2 dudes on pc have issues just getting it installed without issues. 1 cant get past the installation, the other suffers from random crashes.
Add to that btb wasnt working since launch.
We all got burnt hard by the initial mcc release, so pretty dang quick everyone collectively said, screw this.
I have separate reasons to not play infinite, but I know for a fact that if this game launched complete, etc…we would be playing it right now.
No, the arena shooter isn’t dead. It was for a while, but revivals happened but haven’t hit the mark. I often see people wish that arena multiplayer would come back, but too few Triple A companies have put forth the effort to make a good arena shooter and maintain that status. Let me list some examples, but preface that I’m a Gen Z, born in 2000. I got into video games way after the arena shooter craze.
Quake Champions: Tried to take a hero shooter spin no one liked and stopped it at launch. Despite fixes to make it back to arena, the game didn’t recover.
Doom 2016: Shot in the foot at release, as well as outsourced. While good at release, the beta killed momentum and few wish to return to the game.
Doom Eternal: One of the most requested features both at launch and now, is for arena multiplayer. In fact, when asked pre-release the devs kept saying along the lines of “arena multiplayer is why we made Quake Champions.” Of course, no one listened.
Unreal Tournament: Next to no marketing. I almost forgot this exists.
Splitgate: I’ve heard great things, but splitgate is a little too indie for the Triple A crowd. It is only appealing to the classic arena shooter fans. Not much competition for a brand name like Doom or Halo.
Quake Remaster/re-release: This game was mostly marketed on its single player, but the multiplayer is doing fine, even added co-op. But it isn’t meant to be an MLG craze.
Halo Infinite: Again, botched launch. Declining player numbers is normal, but as an alternative to twitch-shooters like COD Warzone, Apex, and Fortnite, they are moving much faster than Halo Infinite.
I feel like Arena multiplayer could have a resurgence, just like how doom 2016 brought back singleplayer “boomer shooters” to the mainstream. But developers need to get it right at launch, and publishers need to give the devs their time to do it. It will never replace what’s already here, but the genre isn’t even trying at this point.
I’ve seen people that want something new or different from the standard FPS fare, many of these same people hoped Halo would fill that. And it didn’t and those people went back to the others, longing for a new multiplayer shooter.
People have been saying this for eons, at least since 2012 to my memory.
The fact of the matter is that 343i came into Halo, had absolutely no clue it why people liked it, then we got a CoD knockoff Halo game and it proved that trying to just chase trends doesn’t net you much. So like 90% or so of the core audience that were from Halo 3 had no place to go and tons of them left and never came back, Halo 4 in many people’s minds is considered the most disappointing Halo game ever because we could’ve gotten a real freaking Halo game that kept tons of players for years on end but 343i screwed the pooch and it died extremely fast.
Now I’m not going to discuss if the core formula is as popular as it once was, this is pretty obvious common sense wise, but Arena shooters haven’t really been popular since like 2007 so I don’t get the logic here.
No reason Infinite can’t have a BR mode or whatever mode you’d want either, no reason why the series can’t offer new experiences or spins on old ones. To put Infinite (or any Halo) into a box is just a gross oversimplification. Once Infinite catches up in terms of what fans expect (I’ll give them 2 years at this rate) then they can screw around with new stuff.
It couldn’t possibly be that there has been a steady decline in quality and content for years on end or that (both)devs made significant gameplay departures that turned people off.
All those people who made those games a success just died I guess or otherwise don’t have any tastes or preferences of their own they just mindlessly consume what is popular.
Its also curious how often “dead” genres are smothered by corporate avarice rather than by being abandoned by the fans of those games. All these corporations see is the success of another title and that is all it takes to abandon currently profitable ventures because you can’t just make a stable profit, you have to make all the money in the world or you might as well make nothing at all.
See also: “Survival Horror(especially big budget SH) is dead” Oh what’s that? Survival horror isn’t dead, it was just purposefully abandoned because it wasn’t making CoD money? Wow what a shock.
The lengths people will go to to absolve these devs and publishers of responsibility for their success is really sad.
I agree with you. Halo’s true arena style never saw failure. Halo Reach was less popular than 3, sure, but it was still a widely successful and acclaimed video game. And that was being a spin off title that was known as a game that Bungie was conflicted on. There’s a reason first week sales were so amazing for Halo 4. But the game died because it wasn’t what people expected. Neither was Halo 5. And Infinite is even debatable. And even if Infinite counts, it’s too broken for you to judge the gameplay on anyways (even though I still don’t think 343 really captured the old gameplay). All of the issues come from the fact that 343 never actually prioritized the people who were already on board with the franchise.
The arena shooter is still alive. It’s just not the juggernaut it once was. Strangely enough, fighting games are more popular than arena shooters currently, and it’s an older genre. When big companies themselves tried bringing back arena shooters to the mainstream, they failed because they turned those games into something the fans didn’t like. Doom 4’s multiplayer for example was like Halo instead of Quake, and Quake Champions was a hero shooter. On the bright side, QC does play more like an old arena shooter. Indie companies brought back arena shooters. Even before id and Epic brought the genre back. Those indie teams made their arena shooters how fans of the genre wanted. No hero shooter, no battle royale, no Call of Duty clone. Just pure old-school arena action. Sadly, they weren’t very popular since not only was there not much advertising for them, but also because they weren’t big names like Doom, Quake, and Unreal Tournament. The teams were also not as popular as id Software and Epic Games. Heck, John Romero alone is more popular than these indie devs. They did deliver what the fans want. Toxikk for example is the spiritual successor to Unreal Tournament 2004.
Um…no. There are huge, major, and objective issues that made people rather not waste their time playing. There’s literally no incentive to play anymore and the content has been stagnant and limited for the last 3.5 months. This has everything to do with 343, not gaming as a whole.
Did it not occur to you that the games inside of the MCC are all over a decade old, barring Halo 4? Why would the population boom back to its peak under any circumstance? People played it and now they don’t want to anymore. Things don’t stay fresh forever regardless of its quality. I could eat a $50 steak every day and it would get boring and unexciting within a week. Use some common sense.
