the community can't accept change but we need it

Games Halo 5: Guardians
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> > > > > I don’t understand how people make these threads and take themselves seroosuly. It is an undeniable fact that the halo population in halo 2, halo 3, and even halo reach is far superior than every halo game made by 343i that included all these changes. And no the core fan base getting older is just a lame excuse to try and give 343i a pass. Fact is their games just suck compared to previous halo games. Worse sales numbers, worse population stats… There is literally zero evidence to suggest otherwise.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > That’s what seems so crazy to me. Obviously people can like Halo’s current direction, that’s fine, but there is absolutely no evidence to suggest Halo wouldn’t have continued on being just about as popular as it was (or maybe slightly less so).
> > > > There are even a few examples highlighting why it actually would’ve been better off sticking to its roots rather than “modernizing” it like they did. Examples like CoDs success despite sticking with the same basic gameplay and now with Dooms success acting as the perfect parallel to what Halo should’ve done this whole time. There is no reason whatsoever for the drastic changes, all people have are unsupported assumptions.
> > >
> > >
> > > Ah yes, CoD is so similar to what it was in 2007. And gaming is completely the same as well.
> > > Doom’s success being what exactly? Decent reviews and a PC community that doesn’t really like it?
> > > Medal of Honor, Crysis, Tomb Raider, Assassin’s Creed. Just a list of series that either died, are dying, or had to reboot because of consistently being the same.
> >
> >
> > It doesn’t matter what you say. People will only see what they want to see.
> > Many here like to hate on H4, and what an embarrassment it was to Halo and how broken the MP was and how small the online population is. All of that makes is terrible right … except that it was the best selling Halo in the US for its time (beating Halo 3).
> > That was before Halo 5, because according to MS Halo 5 has that crown now.
> > But they are all terrible because those guys say they are and everyone else is stupid for having any other logic or reasoning.
>
>
> Halo 5’s sales included console, controller and REQ sales added in. It did not sell more or faster than either Halo 3 or 4.
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> 4 had the advantage of the highest xbox install base when it launched. Both Halo 4 and 5 have seen huge sales and population drop off after launch. They have seen that drop off because of the quality of the games.
>
> That’s not us saying the games are bad, that’s the entire wider gaming community.

There were 9 new major IPs (relevant or were relevant for the last 5-6 years) created when Halo 3 came out (2007). Of those 9 IPs, almost all of them had a following release in either 2010 or 2012. Generally, the ones in 2012 sold better than the ones in 2010, which in turn sold much better than the ones in 2007.

Population retention was a great metric in the early to even mid 2000’s. So few major IPs being released, lots of new publishers entering the scene. It was good to know, out of the 4 or 5 games people played on one console, how much time they were spending on a certain game. In 2015, its not a great metric. Every single month you have 2-3 new AAA games coming out, and you expect people to spend all their time playing one game?

Its interesting to see that with each subsequent AAA title that was released and franchise that followed, how Halo has lost more and more players, before the days of “I hate 343i” and “We want Bungie back”.

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Halo 2 and 3 also didn’t have nearly as much competition as Halo 5 has right now. The market is way more flooded with games to play now.

Also, PlayStation mopped the floor with Xbox, I am sure plenty of people went from 360 to PlayStation which cut from halo 5’s potential customers.

343i should not be taking all of the blame in the sales drop. Xbox got out marketed by Sony. If halo was on both platforms it would have sold much better. They knocked this game out of the park.

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> I’ll leave you with a question. Major Nelson used to count UU’s for his weekly XBL activity lists. For the majority of late 2007 and 2008 Halo 3 held the top spot for number of Unique Users playing the game within a week. When Modern Warfare 2 came out, that changed. Modern Warfare 2 was now the consistent top spot, with Halo occasionally flourishing, everytime a big Bungie or Recon event came up (July 7th, etc) or when big news came out about Halo. The biggest question here is how a newly sold game could somehow have more Unique Users playing it weekly compared to a game that had been selling for 2 years already. Seems to me the logical choice was that lots of Halo 3 players simply switched to playing Modern Warfare 2 and thus Halo 3 numbers went down and Modern Warfare 2 numbers went up. If people back then were already switching games and were playing Halo 3 less and less, why should anyone have continued to make Halo the same way again?

I’m not responding to you in particular, but this is a concept I see echoed sometimes. People make the mistake of thinking both games were just pulling from the same pool of players when that wasn’t the case. During MW2’s time, CoD was already starting to become a household name and becoming more known by - and played by - non-gamers and very casual gamers. CoD brought new players into the general population pool, rather than any one game only stealing players away from another. It’s often forgotten about how CoD brought in people that barely played games/ shooters, which was a big part of their success.

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> Halo 2 and 3 also didn’t have nearly as much competition as Halo 5 has right now. The market is way more flooded with games to play now.
>
> Also, PlayStation mopped the floor with Xbox, I am sure plenty of people went from 360 to PlayStation which cut from halo 5’s potential customers.
>
> 343i should not be taking all of the blame in the sales drop. Xbox got out marketed by Sony. If halo was on both platforms it would have sold much better. They knocked this game out of the park.

People wont listen to this. Theyll assume that the sheer numbers of new IPs that came out in 2007 means there was huge competition, even though the first game in series sales are always pretty low

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> > I’ll leave you with a question. Major Nelson used to count UU’s for his weekly XBL activity lists. For the majority of late 2007 and 2008 Halo 3 held the top spot for number of Unique Users playing the game within a week. When Modern Warfare 2 came out, that changed. Modern Warfare 2 was now the consistent top spot, with Halo occasionally flourishing, everytime a big Bungie or Recon event came up (July 7th, etc) or when big news came out about Halo. The biggest question here is how a newly sold game could somehow have more Unique Users playing it weekly compared to a game that had been selling for 2 years already. Seems to me the logical choice was that lots of Halo 3 players simply switched to playing Modern Warfare 2 and thus Halo 3 numbers went down and Modern Warfare 2 numbers went up. If people back then were already switching games and were playing Halo 3 less and less, why should anyone have continued to make Halo the same way again?
>
>
> I’m not responding to you in particular, but this is a concept I see echoed sometimes. People make the mistake of thinking both games were just pulling from the same pool of players when that wasn’t the case. During MW2’s time, CoD was already starting to become a household name and becoming more known by - and played by - non-gamers and very casual gamers. CoD brought new players into the general population pool, rather than any one game only stealing players away from another. It’s often forgotten about how CoD brought in people that barely played games/ shooters, which was a big part of their success.

Highly unlikely it pulled in enough players over a one month span to somehow beat the number of Unique Users that were playing Halo 3 after two years of sales. This is Unique Users for an entire week, not just some population count.

Essentially what you are saying is that a huge number of people who never touched the biggest shooter on the planet at the time (Halo 3) just up and decided to buy Modern Warfare 2 in its launch month, and then never gave Halo 3 a chance. Halo 3 led up until November. After the week of the 9th, it barely ever got top spot. Not to mention that right below it on the list consisted of Modern Warfare 1 and World At War. Not a chance. People stopped playing Halo 3 to play Modern Warfare 2. What you are saying means that a large portion of the Halo community just stopped playing Halo after Modern Warfare 2 launched, for a separate reason other than Modern Warfare 2. It’d have to be a pretty large portion of the Halo community. Why is it so hard to accept that people moved from Halo to CoD when CoD became the go to shooter?

Just a few things: Very casual gamers played Halo 3. It was the only real shooter on consoles at the time. The FPS genre was the largest genre in video games at the time. Whether people played Halo 3 out of fun or out of necessity is not the argument. But casual gamers are the people who we lost over the span from Halo 3 - Halo 4. Non-gamers probably got intimidated by the fact that it is fairly unappealing to those who never touched a shooter, much less one where humans act very different than in real life.

Interesting thought: Points like these, ones that state information that cannot be quantified by facts or figures, ones that make a general sense but are lacking in hard data, can be considered a valid counter argument when it goes against 343. But someone cannot like sprint for the virtue of it “making them feel faster”, for immersion. Someone cannot enjoy Spartan Abilities and see them within the aspects of Halo.

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> > > > > I don’t understand how people make these threads and take themselves seroosuly. It is an undeniable fact that the halo population in halo 2, halo 3, and even halo reach is far superior than every halo game made by 343i that included all these changes. And no the core fan base getting older is just a lame excuse to try and give 343i a pass. Fact is their games just suck compared to previous halo games. Worse sales numbers, worse population stats… There is literally zero evidence to suggest otherwise.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > That’s what seems so crazy to me. Obviously people can like Halo’s current direction, that’s fine, but there is absolutely no evidence to suggest Halo wouldn’t have continued on being just about as popular as it was (or maybe slightly less so).
> > > >
> > > > There are even a few examples highlighting why it actually would’ve been better off sticking to its roots rather than “modernizing” it like they did. Examples like CoDs success despite sticking with the same basic gameplay and now with Dooms success acting as the perfect parallel to what Halo should’ve done this whole time. There is no reason whatsoever for the drastic changes, all people have are unsupported assumptions.
> > >
> > >
> > > Ah yes, CoD is so similar to what it was in 2007. And gaming is completely the same as well.
> > >
> > > Doom’s success being what exactly? Decent reviews and a PC community that doesn’t really like it?
> > >
> > > Medal of Honor, Crysis, Tomb Raider, Assassin’s Creed. Just a list of series that either died, are dying, or had to reboot because of consistently being the same.
> >
> >
> > It doesn’t matter what you say. People will only see what they want to see.
> >
> > Many here like to hate on H4, and what an embarrassment it was to Halo and how broken the MP was and how small the online population is. All of that makes is terrible right … except that it was the best selling Halo in the US for its time (beating Halo 3).
> >
> > That was before Halo 5, because according to MS Halo 5 has that crown now.
> >
> > But they are all terrible because those guys say they are and everyone else is stupid for having any other logic or reasoning.
>
>
> If you are to provide a link, at least read it.
> Halo 4 only had more sales than Halo 3 over their respective launch year… Maybe should I add that in 2007, there were about 15 millions Xbox 360 sold, versus more than 50 millions in 2012.

Yes sure but it had way less competition in the FPS space, plus competition from other genres and keep in mind mobile gaming wasn’t even a thing n 2007. If H4 was so crap or hated why did it sell at all?

My point is just because some guy or guys on a forum say something is crap, it doesn’t make it so.

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If theres a small changes and tweak then its ok, not like the reach to 4 multiplayer, that was awful, luckily 5s multi is going back while keeping it fresh

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> If people back then were already switching games and were playing Halo 3 less and less, why should anyone have continued to make Halo the same way again?

Sorry had to delete most of post or mine would of not fit.

Yes Medal of Honor was in decline before hand because the games were being poorly made, even before the 2007 releases. If a game is done poorly it wont matter if the game stays the same or not, badly made games won’t sell. Not to mention the PS2 sold like crap since the PS2 was dead because the new GEN started and has been going on for a bit. The PSP/Wii version might of not sold well because not only were they again badly made games but the Wii was terrible for selling 3rd party games and the PSP was not selling the greatest. However concrete sales numbers were never released for those games so nor you or I can say they meet or did not meet sales expectations or what they even were. MOH: Airborne, which came out for PS3/360/PC during that time actually got good reviews but again no official sales numbers. Besides Airborne the other 2 MOH got bad reviews because they crap games not because they stayed the same.

Crysis 2 rated better and sold better than Warhead… an expansion game… that only came out for PC unlike Crysis 2 which came out for all 3 major system, wow. First the Crysis 1 PC version actually has a better rating then any platform from 2 and then PC version by it’s self out sold Crysis 2 with all platforms combined, I really hope you are not using vgchartz. Crysis 3 sold poorly or at least did not meet sales expectations since the quality has been going down already. Also Crysis 3 story was the part of the game that considered the worst part of the game, how you got to it being “decent story” I have no Idea. Unless that is your opinion which would then be funny since you said you don’t care about my personal opinion on any game, not hypocritical at all. One final thing I wanted to add, Dead Space 3 also came out during time of Crysis 3. Dead Space 3 also was not as well recieved and did not sell as well like the previous 2 because guess why, Dead Space 3 was moving away from the franchise roots.

Anyway moving on. Tomb Raider Underworld failed to meet expectations at first which is true but later on actually meet their sales expectations and this comes from the president of Eidos Interactive at the time. Tomb Raider (2013) maybe took 5 years to make because the team split after Underworld with one team working on
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light and then the other team on the reboot which they made a new engine for or heavily reworked the old one. Come on, again were did you get decent first game from? The 2013 reboot was critically acclaimed and is the best selling TR game in entire franchise, and how is ROTTR a bad game? ROTTR was well received and Microsoft Studios and Square Enix both were happy with the game sales not to mention it only came out for one platform being Xbox initially with and that platform being where TR games have always sold the least on. Don’t forget ROTTR came out the same day has Fallout 4 and in general during a busy gaming month and all the backlash for being a time exclusive. The TR reboot came out out on all 3 major platforms at the same time during no major game releases. Extra little fun fact the first time TR reboot was again because the quailty in the games went downhill.

Assassin’s Creed Unity shipped more than than Brotherhood actually. Of course Assassin’s Creed Syndicate sold less because Unity was a bug/glitch fest of game which proves my point even more that poorly made games will affect game or game franchise sales. Syndicate did better then Unity in it’s second week by the way.

I don’t care what people argued on here about DOOM, what does that have to do with anything. You talked about DOOM’s success not mentioning the MP specifically, you just said DOOM. So when you said “Doom’s success being what exactly? Decent reviews and a PC community that doesn’t really like it?” was proving with facts that statement is untrue since you were not talking about the MP by it’s self. As MP, of course PC crowd don’t like DOOM’s MP because IT MOVED AWAY FROM ROOTS BY INTRODUCING MODERN FEATURES INTO THE MP. You are actually dismantling your own argument with this very point. DOOM’s only real negative point comes from the one aspect of the game that did not stay the same.

If we are only talking about MP, why did you give a bunch of single player examples or mention the single player part. Unless of course you are only talking about DOOM which would then mean you cherry picked the one bad aspect of the game but still failed to understand why the MP is considered bad in the first place.

So you still have not really support you claim of Halo would of declined if stayed the same. However I actually agree that Halo would of declined regardless because COD was just easier to pick up and play. I also believe Halo would not have declined as much if 343 did not alienate the fans they already had. All of your examples you kept mentioning how reviews kept going down and games selling poor for staying the same. Yet Halo 5 is one of the worst reviewed Halo’s and worst selling ones and Halo 5 has not stayed the same at all. Halo 5 is a perfect counter argument to the very examples you gave if they were not wrong to begin with.

As for your question. First the fact that a Halo 3 a 2 year old game could still take the #1 spot from COD that currently released is pretty impressive which just proves people were still enjoying classic Halo. Besides any and every games player base is going to go down after a while, more so because the new games come out all the time. Sure you will always have the super hardcore fans the only play this one game, but people like to play variety of games. Halo 3 was just getting old. Gears of War lost player over time but Gears 2 stayed the same, yet had even more players playing. I am assuming Moder Warfare lost players over time and Modern Warfare 2 had even more people playing for staying same. So there is my answer.

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Medal of Honor. Stayed the same, sold poorly. They stopped the series due to the poor sales of Airborne. Also, reviewers consistently agreed that the lack of anything new or creative in the other 2 games brought them down. Hence bad reviews.

Crysis 1. 3 million sales in 1 year and a bit. Crysis 2. 2 million sales in 6 weeks. You do the math. Not to mention Crytek said they had a bump in Crysis 2 popularity after the Crysis 3 announcement. Another thing, Crysis benefited from its whole “can it run Crysis?” phase as well as large sales and Pc discounts. Critics had terrible reviews of Crysis 2’s story, and 3’s was far better received. Decent is a comparative metric. Yet again, a game with core gameplay metrics that never changed, and it failed.

Underworld: The president said it reached expectations with no figures or numbers after a much lower selling game than the previous titles. TR was rebooted for sales, no other reason. Underworld was well received by critics. Where’s the downhill quality you were talking about? More like a general lack of interest in Tomb Raider. Secondly, the reboot has the benefit of being on two generations, and “best selling Tomb Raider game” isn’t that great of a metric. ROTTR sold poorly compared to the “best selling Tomb Raider” game. SE would obviously be happy with the game, they shouldered no marketing or distribution costs. Microsoft isn’t really going to say that a game in their “Greatest Games Lineup” sold well.

5 years to make a small marketplace game and revamp an engine? Unlikely. They wanted a real reboot, so they waited for people to forget about the old games.

I misspoke when I said Brotherhood sold the most in the series. AC3 sold the most in the series, likely followed by Brotherhood. Confirmed number for AC games are 12 million for AC3, 8 million for Brotherhood, 7 million for Revelations, and 10 million for Unity and Rogue combined. Rogue was selling on a combined install base of 80+ million, Unity selling on an install base of 36 million. Not likely it out sold Brotherhood. Also, I’d just like to point out what a stupid metric “more second week sales than AC Unity” is. By the second week, everyone who hadn’t preordered the game had read the reviews and been on the internet and had seen the amount of bugs and issues Unity launched with. Nobody bought it week 2.

I mentioned Doom because it was used on this site as some sort of symbol that games that stick to their roots and return are going to be highly successful. And it isn’t. It doesn’t have great sales. Which is the entire point. Multiplayer/campaign, doesn’t matter. Sales matter, from a success standpoint. I’d argue that the Modern gamer does not care at all for campaign. Hence why post Black Ops CoD games still sell incredibly well. Doom’s real negative is low sales. Critics love the campaign, so do most of the old PC players, but console gamers and newer PC gamers alike don’t care. Hence the lack of sales.

I’m not picking or choosing anything. I’m giving examples of series that never changed and didnt get great sales after a long period of time. Which is just a counterpoint to the whole “Halo would be the best game in the whole wide world if it had just never changed”. Bungie themselves noticed the change in gaming culture, went out and created a terrible game that somehow has become a great hit. It’s a Borderlands copy without a real story and fast fluid gameplay. Instant moneymaker, even after bad reviews, even after numerous DLC money grabs, and even after they offered content to newer players without ever trying to help loyal day one players

Halo 5 sales are not bad. They have the highest attach rate for any exclusive game this generation. Something that only Halo 3 did better. This means that it did BETTER than Reach or Halo 4. By example. Halo 4 sold, an estimated 10 million copies. On an install base of 80 million. Halo 5 sold an estimated 3.5 million, which without official confirmation is just speculation and hearsay, on another estimate of 18-19 million Xbox Ones (which was reported as a rumour multiple times in the news, so it will be used since the unconfirmed Halo 5 number is also speculation). This works out to an attach rate of .1875 for Halo 3 (this is lifetime to date so it will be much higher in 2011 vs 2013, with sales not increasing by much), .182 for Halo 5, .124 for Halo 4, and slightly higher than Halo Reach. Later on, if I have time and there are figures, I will calculate and give you the real time attach rates for the past Halo games which I did before, which still shows a very low figure for games after Halo 3. Regardless, Halo 4 to Halo 5 is a large jump in attach rate, and that’s on sales figures that are probably underestimated seriously. Also, just to note, Halo 4 to Halo 5 is a 3 point drop in overall metacritic rating, not as drastic as other games. The other thing to mention is that the downfall of those games existed within a single generation. The only different one here being AC, but with a lack of sales info and general estimation factors I can probably prove that as well.

Look, I enjoyed this argument until I reached this end point. I don’t know if you don’t understand how UU weekly counts work, or if you don’t care, but a 1 month old game shouldn’t be able to displace a 2 year old game that was supposedly insanely popular and everyone was playing it and sometimes 1 million people were online at once. It doesn’t happen. Unless, of course, the players of that game just left. But you’d assume they’d come back? Only they didn’t. Your answer wasn’t an answer, just a stating of facts. The list consisted was:

1 - Modern Warfare 2
2 - Halo 3
3 - World at War
4 - Modern Warfare
5 - Gears of Wars 2

Halo 3 is getting outplayed by a game that came out within 1 month. The facts of this are: Modern Warfare 2 had the most amount of unique players every week. Halo 3 had more sales than Modern Warfare 2, on 360, for most of this time. When people were not playing these two games, they were playing the other CoD games.

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someone did their home work good job.

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> someone did their home work good job.

Yeah I like this guy who uses logic than saying something bashing.

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> > someone did their home work good job.
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> Yeah I like this guy who uses logic than saying something bashing.

I so agree, people asked and when they get what they want they say ‘Its to much, stop please stop!’

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I’ve seen people present much evidence to support why lower sales and population could mean that fans generally think the games in the franchise have gotten worse. I’ve also seen a lot of counters to those arguments suggesting that that evidence may not quite mean what they think.

I have never seen anyone present evidence to support the view that fans generally think Halo is just as good (or just about) as it’s always been. The explanation of one side and a counter are made every day, but no one seems to present evidence of the opposite view. Interesting indeed.

One sides throwing punches, while the other keeps blocking the shots. But it becomes very noticable when the guy who’s blocking never throws any punches of his own.

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Because the guy blocking shots is not trying to fight? He’s just defending himself.

It’s fair for fans to not like new Halo. It’s fair to have opinions and views.

One side is consistently against any move that 343 makes. I mean I’ve seen people who’d much rather Halo have just died out than become this. Which is rather ignorant and possessive way of viewing a franchise that millions of people play and enjoy.

The guy blocking shots is enjoying the game. He is defending his point of view.

The idea that Halo is as good as its always been is a poor idea. Halo being good is a subjective and relative stance to so many things there is no point arguing it because ultimately, the only thing that matters is how you, as a fan, feel about the game. And by these forums, we can tell fans feel every which way.

Fans want huge changes back to Halo 3, or want Halo 3 with thruster and Halo 5 weapon balance, or a nerf to automatics and return to Halo 3 weapon balance. They want competitive, fair teams, ultimate customization, then want their Spartans to look battle worn and rugged, or have Elites with different hit boxes and then complain about auto aim and bullet mag and missed shots. There’s no compromise when everyone wants something different.

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> Because the guy blocking shots is not trying to fight? He’s just defending himself.
> It’s fair for fans to not like new Halo. It’s fair to have opinions and views.
> One side is consistently against any move that 343 makes. I mean I’ve seen people who’d much rather Halo have just died out than become this. Which is rather ignorant and possessive way of viewing a franchise that millions of people play and enjoy.
> The guy blocking shots is enjoying the game. He is defending his point of view.
> The idea that Halo is as good as its always been is a poor idea. When McDonald’s is the only thing you’ve ever eaten, it’s hard to start eating salads and quinoa all day. Halo being good is a subjective and relative stance to so many things there is no point arguing it because ultimately, the only thing that matters is how you as a fan feel. And by these forums, we can tell fans feel every which way.
> Fans want huge changes back to Halo 3, or want Halo 3 with thruster and Halo 5 weapon balance, or a nerf to automatics and return to Halo 3 weapon balance. They want competitive, fair teams, ultimate customization, then want their Spartans to look battle worn and rugged, or have Elites with different hit boxes and then complain about auto aim and bullet mag and missed shots. There’s no compromise when everyone wants something different.

That’s all well and good, you know as well as anyone I’ve done my share of arguing. Some people may think Halo is better than it’s ever been, some may think it’s worse than it’s ever been, some are somewhere in between and some may hold any of those opnions only when compared to other franchises. One can think Halo has gotten better at some things and worse at others and still think a game as a whole is better or worse than previous games.

But if someone’s gonna suggests that the evidence I present may not mean what I think it does (which is fine), I think they should at least explain the opposite point of view that they seem to support, because without that the argument amounts to, “maybe, maybe not”. If I tell you (“you” as in anyone) why I believe people generally think Halo has gotten worse and you say you disagree, that’s fine. I just expect you to tell me why you think the opposite, not only why you think I’m wrong, because when I tell you the basis of my point of view, that alone means there’s more legitimacy to my point of view than there is for someone who has no basis for their point of view.

In other words, I’m basing my beliefs on something, while the other side is basing their beliefs - seemingly - on nothing. Even in the many debates about sprint, each side has their own reasons for believing whether or not it should be in the game and they’re both defend their view while arguing against the opposing view. That’s how arguments/ debates/ discussions should be, but that’s never been the case with the argument at hand. That says, to me, that while one side has observations for their point of view, the other has wishful thinking for theirs.

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Why is there an error on my posts!!!

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> "I’m not picking or choosing anything. I’m giving examples of series that never changed and didnt get great sales after a long period of time. Which is just a counterpoint to the whole “Halo would be the best game in the whole wide world if it had just never changed”. Bungie themselves noticed the change in gaming culture, went out and created a terrible game that somehow has become a great hit. It’s a Borderlands copy without a real story and fast fluid gameplay. Instant moneymaker, even after bad reviews, even after numerous DLC money grabs, and even after they offered content to newer players without ever trying to help loyal day one players.
>
> Halo 5 sales are not bad. They have the highest attach rate for any game this generation. Something that only Halo 3 did better. This means that it did BETTER than Reach or Halo 4. By example. Halo 4 sold, an estimated 10 million copies. On an install base of 80 million. Halo 5 sold an estimated 3.5 million, which without official confirmation is just speculation and hearsay, on another estimate of 18-19 million Xbox Ones (which was reported as a rumour multiple times in the news, so it will be used since the unconfirmed Halo 5 number is also speculation). This works out to an attach rate of .1875 for Halo 3 (this is lifetime to date so it will be much higher in 2011 vs 2013, with sales not increasing by much), .182 for Halo 5, .124 for Halo 4, and slightly higher than Halo Reach. Later on, if I have time and there are figures, I will calculate and give you the real time attach rates for the past Halo games which I did before, which still shows a very low figure for games after Halo 3. Regardless, Halo 4 to Halo 5 is a large jump in attach rate, and that’s on sales figures that are probably underestimated seriously. Also, just to note, Halo 4 to Halo 5 is a 3 point drop in overall metacritic rating, not as drastic as other games. The other thing to mention is that the downfall of those games existed within a single generation. The only different one here being AC, but with a lack of sales info and general estimation factors I can probably prove that as well…"
>
> "Halo 3 is getting outplayed by a game that came out within 1 month. The facts of this are: Modern Warfare 2 had the most amount of unique players every week. Halo 3 had more sales than Modern Warfare 2, on 360, for most of this time. When people were not playing these two games, they were playing the other CoD games."

Short term, Halo 3 did get outplayed by MW2 in unique players in their first week. However, Long-term, Halo 3 flourished a strong community. In reality, Halo 3 didn’t die-out on its own due to low population for the three years before the release of Halo Reach in 2010. No one would have known if Halo 3 would die out on its own because the sales automatically suffered due to the release of a new Halo game.

A Halo without Sprint is assumed to be one of the greatest shooter titles due to the upwards trend line in population, community, and overall success. However, a Halo with Sprint and more abilities that overlap in its competitors’ games, as seen in Halo 5, 4 and Reach, obviously do not get it any where near the same sales as a Halo without Sprint, such as Halo 3.

One major thing to consider about the ending argument is the fact that you are comparing two completely different games, communities, developers, etc. when in reality the only way to improve a community and grow is by focusing on what YOU, yourself, can do to please YOUR loyal fans. Halo 5 attempted catering to the Call of Duty fans. Halo 5’s sales are OK, but the fact that it’s selling an average amount of copies doesn’t excuse the failure in lacking of unique gameplay. Here’s a quick anecdotal addition: I had 5 friends who constantly grind Call of Duty. They love it, and even though they rage and whine, they still play it consistently. In constant attempts at bringing them over to Halo 5 and playing consistently on my game that I grind out, they easily transfer to Halo 5. Yet, that is the very reason why they end up returning back to Call of Duty to play Zombies or casual multiplayer matches. It doesn’t matter what Halo 5 does, it will not bring in a multitude of people to the franchise and destroy their lives because they don’t want to play any other game other than Halo. For Call of Duty fans, Halo 5 only provides a short-term attachment, with them to soon run back to COD. This is why Halo 5 sold so many copies in the first few weeks, it was a game everyone wanted to pick up, but sales numbers didn’t replicate the population, today.

Here’s the Top 15 XB1 games, by popularity (5/31/2016):

CoD BOIII
NBA 2K16
FIFA 16
GTA V
Minecraft
Tom Clancy’s The Division
CoD BO1
Fallout 4
Destiny
ARK (Game Preview)
Overwatch
Rainbow Six Siege
Halo 5: Guardians
Roblox
Battlefield 4

Analysis: CoD BO3 and BO1 sit within the Top 7, BO3 in 1st and BO1 at 7th. Halo 5 is not in the top 10, sitting in the 13th spot with ROBLOX trailing it. We have the current Call of Duty and an XBOX 360 compatible BO1 in the top 10, yet Halo 5 sits way behind as of May 31st 2016. Three other shooters, Fallout 4, The Division, and Destiny, are in the top 10, as well. In conclusion, Halo 5 did NOT successfully steal Call of Duty, or Destiny fans, away from their game, even when they share similar movement systems, such as Sprint, Slide, Dash, Ground Pound, etc.

Sales numbers of Halo 3 and Halo 5: The only known knowledge about the first released sales number is as follows: Halo 3 had over 1 million people playing on launch day and generated over $170 million in sales in the first 24 hours of its release. According to GameSpot, in its first week of release, Halo 5 reached $400 million in total. Now if we do the math upfront, halo 3 earned nearly half as much money as Halo 5 did in a day, than Halo 5 did in a week. Even then, if we consider how much money Halo 5 gained from hardware, the estimate that Halo 5 sold around 1.5 million copies in the first week, and the fact that Microsoft never showed the physical copies sold of the game, it is pretty safe to say that Halo 5 sold less copies than Halo 3 did on launch day.

Population of Halo 5: Since 343 Industries/Microsoft like to hide the in-game populations of Halo 5 (coughBecauseThey’reSoLowcough) there are no solid numbers to go by. However, since the Top 10 spot in Xbox One games are usually 20k-30k, and Halo 5 is in 13th, we can assume that the population is lower than 20k.

Conclusion: The populations of Halo 5 are disappointing and support the argument of having a Halo that doesn’t imitate other games and creates new systems of movement that ADD to the Halo 3 formula, that functioned fine, and make the game, not stay the same, but get better. The common argument that Halo 1-3 are the same exact game are inaccurate because they’ve all played differently due to the new gameplay additions such as physics, equipment (such as Halo 3’s portable gravity lift pick-up), and much more. There’s a misconception in the halo community that Halo “needed” a MASSIVE change in its gameplay. In reality, they’ve forgotten how Halo’s golden era was cut short by a massive change and wasn’t rightfully given a chance to succeed in a NEW game after Halo 3. Halo with Sprint isn’t an “evolution.” It doesn’t take Halo anywhere up, but deviate to something that’s different. If Halo 6 didn’t have Sprint, I wonder if those who approve of sprint could also adapt to it, the same way that they tell those that don’t approve.

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I skimmed Harith’s long post and found an error in something he said that should probably be pointed out. As far as I can find, Halo 5 has “the highest week one attach rate for a Microsoft first party title on Xbox One”. That’s very different than having “the highest attach rate of any game this generation” as you claimed. Unless of course you found a more recent announcement on that subject that I missed.

Needless to say, the fact that it’s only counting week one sales and only Xbox first party games, doesn’t really tell us how well it did. Sounds like it probably had a higher attach rate than the games you would expect and a lower attach rate than the games you would expect.

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> I skimmed Harith’s long post and found an error in something he said that should probably be pointed out. As far as I can find, Halo 5 has “the highest week one attach rate for a Microsoft first party title on Xbox One”. That’s very different than having “the highest attach rate of any game this generation” as you claimed. Unless of course you found a more recent announcement on that subject that I missed.
>
> Needless to say, the fact that it’s only counting week one sales and only Xbox first party games, doesn’t really tell us how well it did. Sounds like it probably had a higher attach rate than the games you would expect and a lower attach rate than the games you would expect.

I meant MS/Sony exclusive games. On an exclusives basis, Halo sells better than other exclusives. The closest comparison would be Uncharted 4, which has real sales units, at 2.7 in week one. But, I agree, I mispoke and put game where I meant exclusive. Halo certainly does not have a better attach rate than CoD or Fallout or anything of that nature. Certainly easier to do this on computer than on mobile. I didnt really expect anyone to think Halo sells better than CoD when its pretty clear that it doesnt.

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> >

While Halo may have tried to incorporate some aspects of CoD into its design, (such as zoom on the left trigger), I dont really see the movement abilities as a reflection on CoD. I see it as 343 fine tuning what they did wrong with Halo 4. They basically took the best parts of the abilities and combined them into SA. Clamber and Ground Pound work well together, sort of like how the jetpack was used to allow people to traverse maps quicker due to better verticality. Thruster is a much less confusing, more refined way to create space between yourself and someone else, and all the other useless abilities types were gotten rid of (Promethean Vision, Regen Field, etc.)

I dont necessarily think 343 wants to create a CoD Halo. They seem to have a particular vision for what they want to make, so they are making it. It boggles my mind that people didnt really think Reach was a CoD clone, but somehow everything 343 does it to make a CoD clone for Halo. 343 may have really messed up when they changed equal starts and map balance in Halo 4, but they were really just turning Halo Reach up to 1000%. When they realized it wasnt working, they dialed it back to what we have now. How any of this comes from a former modern era shooter and, previously, a World War II shooter is beyond me.

Just a few things. A 3 game sample size, which occured on two different consoles, experiencing huge changes in gaming on a whole are not good comparisons.

Long term, MW2 did much better than Halo 3. MW2 had a sizeable population when its sequel released, and even managed to grab a few days of higher than MW3 populations until the cheaters ruined it. Long story short, Halo had the casual gamer crowd, CoD took that crowd, but Halo continued to sell on that name for the rest of that console generation. Fast forward to now, and no one care about Halo because they have CoD. And the Xbox One is lacking for that fact.

Arguing sales without arguing what came before it also a consideration point. Halo 3 launched after Halo 2, which featured a cliffhanger ending and basically started console multiplayer gaming. Halo 5 released after a broken mess of what was supposed to be a love letter to Halo fans.

Again, population is a weak metric in the 2016 era of video games. Seeing as how the largest demographic of FPS gamers is 18-34, people are much too advanced to simply play one of the many fantastic experiences there are in gaming. I have a huge backlog of games, and sometimes ill spend a week or two not playing Halo. Does that mean Halo is dead to me? Certainly not. I spend my other time on the forums for the damn game, arguing with others.