Looking at any verifiable numbers and try an extrapolate the actual playerbase. You get no where near 20m players. Not even close.
That and the fact there is countless examples of 343 bare faced lying either through ignorance or straight up ineptness.
Pretty much all of there dev updates were pure fiction. Even right now the pinned article about the tv shows states everyone enjoyed making it even though the show runner has come out and said they want nothing to do with season 2 if it gets made.
The only consistent is the fact they have no qualms about telling absolute whoppers.
I’m sure there are a number of ways to extrapolate on actual available data, but everything comes down to how i343 counts it, and from when.
20 million players on launch day? Seems suspicious that they’d post that close to two months after retail release.
Since beta? Even weirder since it’s not really a “true” release.
Since the flights? That’s stretching it real thin but i343 could motivate it still.
Basically first thing my math teacher told the class on statistics and analytics was that statistics are extremely easy to tell your tale with, regardless of what they are.
I’m not interested in the number, I’m curious what that number includes.
How many have played +5 hours? +10? Etc.
Starting a game, and then uninstalling shouldn’t count towards being a player of a game.
Wouldn’t even be surprised if they just counted downloads with no history on players who downloaded it and then uninstalled without ever opening the game.
Cause I’m sure people who tried it out, and couldn’t run it on their PC also counts according to i343.
While they’ve been caught lying, they’re also extremely good with saying technically true things, while it being something other than what’ expected, like, the first BS being “free”.
Based on the xbox achievements 25 % of 20mil played the Campaign so we are talking 5mil to be exact,the rest are 15mil based on the f2p model which are disappointed cause the number that keeps playing the game is going down every day cause if you take a casual gamer he will have better ideas for the PVP from the whole 343 studio combined.
People saying 343 doesn’t listen to players are honestly ignorant and naive.
We’ve gotten almost double digit hot fixes to various aspects of the game the community has been vocal about since launch. The only period where 343 went dark was a month directly because of the holidays.
People complaining, please be specific. What it’s 343 not listening to? What community complaints haven’t already had past patches applied and future patches confirmed?
A lot of you are spoiled imo. You can be unhappy with the game, but that doesn’t mean you should blatantly lie
Their “25 million Spartans” is probably counting the total number of downloads (/ free purchases), or total number of people that have ever logged into the game a single time. I bet daily logins is a very small faction of that number, but likely still large (my guess 1-2 million a day)
Double digit hotfixes? To what game? Not infinite. Its had 2 patches. Unless you counting it as 2x 1’s and even then it still incorrect. One of the patches didn’t even have a positive effect, in fact it broke more than it fixed. The first did add some playlists but again, it broke BTB. Hardly a wins.
Promising patches is all well and good but unless you can back that up with previous success’s (they cant, read above) then promises are worthless. Here… I promise every forum member a blowie in summer. Now what do you think the chances are that I will actually spend my summer on my knees?
By calling 343 liars, you seem to think we are lying… there is verifiable things that they have lied about… go read the dev blogs regarding the “tons” of customisation options or the “millions of combinations available from day 1”, hell go watch the teaser trailer and see how much of that was blatantly false.
What are we unhappy about?
The state of the game. Its a mess from the top down. Its easier for me to tell you what’s not broken at this point. But off the top of my head…
Bad netcode causing horrible desync.
Bad matchmaking forcing players into high ping servers (then having the nerve to call those geofiltering “Bad Actors”)
Stupid prices in the store, they have essentially raised their prices with individual prices or just removed items from bundles such as with this weeks mythic set perfect sector.
BTB is still broken… almost 2 months after breaking it.
Advertising the game as a Live Service when they don’t even understand what that concept means.
The list goes on and on. We are not spoilt. We just now realise (again) that 343 shouldn’t be trusted to make a bowl of cereal never mind a complex FPS online shooter.
As bad as 2042 is they still can manage 120 players in a lobby with jets, helis, tanks and robo dogs at all times. People wanted 343 to make a 100 player Halo battle royale game but 343 can’t manage a 24 player BTB lobby with a brute chopper and gungoose occasionally spawning at times.
Just means 20 million individual accounts have at least launched the game once. Not very surprising considering it is f2p and imo means nothing. What matters is concurrent average players and that is getting cut in half month by month. Game is dying extremely fast.
It’s a little tricky, really. I don’t know how many others are out there like me, but I have Halo Infinite downloaded on multiple platforms and I am only one person. Are they counting per XBL account that downloaded/played it? Per SKU and/or per platform? Or actually per user who has played at least one game? Take me for an example, do I count as one out of that 20 million who played, or five out of that 20 million since I have it on five different platforms?
I think it’s pre download, since they really can’t go by sales being free to play. They boast console says as a whole, not by how many people logged online. We all know a lot of consoles sat on eBay but they were counted as consoles sold.
They need to qualify what this 20 million actually consists of…is it game sales, downloads, unique player accounts or devices…or a combination of all of them.
These figures can easily be artificially inflated whichever value it represents. As an example (and as others have already mentioned), I have 2x Xbox consoles and 2x accounts on those consoles…both of which have downloaded and played Halo, so is that counted as 1, 2 or even 4? Some players or households could easily have at least 4 or more accounts and even more consoles which they use and share.
From a business perspective, they should actually be more concerned and be asking serious questions as to why their player retention is so low and continues to fall. Regardless of whatever this 20 million represents, it’s actually irrelevant if they’ve only retained a relatively small percentage and should highlight more issues than benefits.
In todays world of gaming, F2P, social media and multiple platforms, we also have to ask what their expectations would have been and if they have been met? Quite clearly they have the perfect storm for Halo Infinite to break records, but again their expectations and peak figures are totally irrelevant if they aren’t able to retain a higher percentage…and they need to be asking themselves why and coming up with good answers so they can address the fundamental issues with the game.
Just a spin they put on it. Nothing more. It’s kind of like all the reviews back in November saying this game was the best thing since sliced bread. I’m sure lots of those were bought. This will be the last time the ‘Halo’ tag will be enough to sell people on a game I’ll bet.
This is the flagship series for xbox. Think about that.
Kinda makes you wonder why they’re buying up studios. Quantity over quality from here on out. Is it any wonder that we’re all furious after this sh**show of a game? I kinda hope Sony delivers monster sequels for Horizon, GoW and others just to remind the goofs at Xbox how its done. I can’t wait to see a YouTube doc in a few years showing how they totally ruined Halo. Such b.s.