First and foremost, DO NOT CLOSE THIS ADMINS. I KNOW THERE IS A POPULATION THREAD, BUT I HAVE SOMETHING I WANT TO SAY THAT IS NOT BURRIED IN THE HUNDREDS OF REPLIES TO THAT THREAD.
Now then, I have a pretty good idea of what Halo 5’s population is. If you look at the Xbox live most played games right now, H5 is at #18 and Star Wars Battlefront is 9 places behind it. SW Battlefront currently has 9 thousand players on. Therefore, theoretically, I should think H5 has somewhere around 20,000 player on and probably peaks daily at around 30,000. This, for a Halo game, may not seem like a lot. However, I have a theory that this actually isn’t bad:
I’m gonna use Halo 4 as an example here. At this time in 2013, when Halo 4 was nearing 2 years old like Halo 5, H4 had (I think) around 20,000 players (like Halo 5). However, Halo 4 sold nearly 10 millions copies while Halo 5 only sold 5 million. Therefore, just using this as a starting point, if Halo 5 had sold as much as Halo 4, then, theoretically, it could have 40,000 players on since it sold half as much as H4 and is performing just as good or a little better. But, I think the sells of the Xbone is playing a bigger part. So lets see what the Halo 5 numbers would, theoretically, look like if it were on 360.
Currently, there are 18 millions Xbones old and 80 millions 360’s. H5 has sold 5 million copies and holds about 20,000 players online at a time. If, then, H5 were on 360, the sales numbers would , theoretically, be 4 times higher. If the sales were 4 times higher, then we can assume that the population would be 4 times higher. Therefore, I should think that if Halo 5 were on the 360, it would have an average online population of 80,000 and peak at around 120,000
I’m sure you’re wondering what the point of this thread was. My point is, many argue that H5 has a relatively low population and, as a result, it must be a bad game. However, the Xbone has sold very poorly and I blame the Xbone for the population numbers, not H5. The fact is, the Xbone is not a very popular console. Since there aren’t that many Xbones, of course the numbers are going to be fairly weak. However, regardless of how you want to view it, H5 is performing better than H4. If H5 were released on the 360 (or if the Xbone had higher sells) then H5 would have a considerably higher population that H4’s and would probably be close to Reach’s. This is important because this means that, instead of having population drops, H5 has had an increase in population. Halo 2 had more players that CE; Halo 3 had more player than Halo 2; Halo Reach started a downward trend and had much less players than H3; Halo 4’s population dropped considerably from Halo Reach’s; and Halo 5, then is the first time since 2007 that we have actually seen a population increase instead of decrease. I hope very much that, by the time Halo 6 rolls around, the Xbone will have sold more and this upwards trend will continue.
EDIT: One last thing I want to point out is that another reason for H5’s lower sales is probably due to H4 and the Xbone. Halo 4 left a soure taste in the mouths of players and the Xbone hasn’t sold very well. But, based on the sales numbers and the fact that it is almost 2 years old, H5 is actually doing pretty good.