It occurred to me. Halo 5 is on a tough road. Xbox One isn’t selling too well. Huge competition during launch month. And fans leaving Halo from the MCC launch. The Xbox One’s best selling game sold 4 million or so I think. I predict Halo 5 to sell 4 million, and if its lucky 6 million (if it convinces people to buy the console). This is not good.
Lets take a moment Halo fans. Think back. Think back to the time when Halo was BIG. I was about 11 years old or so during the Halo 3 hype. That was intense. Halo 3 shook the world. TV news stations were talking about it, everyone knew what Halo was. Halo 1 sold 6 million, Halo 2 sold 8 million, Halo 3 sold 13 million. Halo was by far the biggest gaming series at its time. It ruled not only FPS but gaming in terms of popularity. I loved these days. There was a sense of pride in being a Halo fan. I could go to any friend in school and start up a convo with them about Halo. Were I to do that today, the response would be “what’s Halo?” “I’ve never played Halo, it probably is lame”. Circa 2007-2009 Halo was the king. But With CoD 4 and Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty stole Halo’s throne and became the best selling FPS and video game.
CoD has had a vicious history with Halo, stealing theatre mode, dual wielding, active camo, looking down and seeing your feet, splitscreen, vehicle battles, and many other things from it. But thats another story (although it is ironic how CoD adds splitscreen for the first time with BO3, at the same time Halo removes splitscreen for the first time with Halo 5. Another reason to predict low sales).
Looking at the launches of Halo games. Halo 4 did fairly well. It sold 8 million. Less than Halo 3, a bit less than Reach. But still decent. Unfortunately Halo 5 doesn’t seem to have much popularity behind it. If you look at youtube videos of Fallout 4, CoD BO3, or Battlefront 3. Check the view count. They are all over 10 million, easily. I commend one of Halo 5’s trailers for hitting 7 million, but sadly Halo has not only become less popular than CoD. But it is now less popular than Battlefield, Fallout, and Battlefront (not to say those are not great video game series, I bring this up to point out Halo’s decline in popularity).
Back in Halo’s prime 2007-2009 Halo was more popular than Fallout, more popular than CoD, you name it. Even Half Life 3 had less hype than Halo. But the tables have turned. Has Halo lost its relevance? Looking at Halo 5’s e3 campaign trailer it has a mere 400k views. That makes me sad. Black Ops 3 has 2m for e3, Fallout 4 2m, and Battlefront a huge 10m. Halo 5 hasn’t even hit 1m. I’m not listing these numbers for the sake of bragging rights, but to raise awareness. Halo’s popularity is going down the drain. Back in Halo 3’s era the world was hyped for a Halo movie. Look on youtube for the first 14 minutes of bungie’s scrapped Halo movie from 2009, you will see 14m views. Now that Halo is finally making films like Nightfall, Forward unto Dawn and a TV series, how much attention do you think its getting? Significantly less as Halo is no longer popular.
Halo 5 launches close BO3, Fallout 4, Battlefront AND Uncharted decided to purposely cut into Halo’s sales. On top of that the Xbox One has fairly low sales. And on top of that Halo MCC warded off some fans and newcomers with it’s matchmaking issues.
Because of all these things I fear Halo 5 will only sell 4 million, 6 million if lucky. Easily the worst selling Halo. I don’t want the fanbase to shrink, I don’t want its popularity to drop. And I don’t want Halo to loose it’s relevance amongst gamers. We are all Halo fans, I think we all feel the same way deep down.
So what can we do?
If 343 advertised the hell out of this game, like there was no tommarow (wich there isn’t) that would help alot. They need to get Game Fuel branded under Halo 5 for this year, before CoD BO3 can with it’s traitorous “PS4 exclusive content first” title (I have nothing against Playstation, but I do have everything against Activision’s devious E3 move leaving Xbox in the dust, and Halo along with it). I see video game ads on youtube and TV all the time. Mostly CoD, mostly Battlefield (which will now be Battlefront this year). I rarely see any Halo ones. Back in the day Halo 3 ads were everywhere. 343i, listen to me, for the sake of Halo’s life, relevance, and popularity. You guys need to ADVERTISE THE TRUCK out of this game! The walking dead Locke and Chief ad was great, but we need more of it. Halo is unique in FPS for its great story, soundtrack, and open environment and big vehicle battles. Show the world this in your ads. Put it on TV, on Busses, everywhere! Get Game Fuel branded as Halo 5. 343 if you don’t run marketing and Microsoft does, tell them to get off their butts because I haven’t seen too many Ads for Halo 5. Even Halo 4 was deprived of advertisement!
CoD, Fallout, and Dice’s games will smother up Halo’s attention and the series population will die out. The stakes are high. 4 million sales for Halo 5? Expect 2 million for Halo 6.
TLDR:
Bug 343 to advertise Halo 5 more, for the sake of Halo’s life.