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Halo Infinite showcases the meaningless of "Player" counts

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Pelta88

Member
Halo celebrated 20 million players at launch. Today, it's difficult to connect to a multi match in any mode. And this got me thinking about the PR behind player counts.

January

This week on PC
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One of the big threads on the infinite sub reddit about matchmaking



By any measure and any standard within gaming, or beyond our hobby, that's a cataclysmic drop in community numbers. In this instance, I'm using Infinite as a showcase of this meaningless PR. But I'm also wondering why we as a community continue to give it credence when it's clearly an inaccurate and false measure of a games success and resonance with it's intended audience.

Just my two cents...
 
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R6Rider

Gold Member
BF2042 will probably drop off again once the new map interest dies down.

Either way this is hilarious.
 

Warnen

Don't pass gaas, it is your Destiny!
Most of these online games have an ebb and flow to them. Some time in destiny takes for ever to match make a strike or pvp match but others there is a que to log on.

I know shit about halo (only like the single player) but if they get you to come back every few months for a bit then there job is done.
 
Well, it was pretty much Xbox's biggest AAA IP going F2P, with the single player campaign available on their subscription service that had about 20m subscribers at the time. They were obvious going to get people to try it, that was never a metric for success for this game.

MS can try to spin all they want but it's pretty obvious what happened here, it fell flat.
 
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Roberts

Member
Hmm, I’m playing both Halo and Fall Guys back to back these days and mostly it takes about the same time to find a match in both games. Some game modes are less popular but stuff like Land Grab is always crowded.
 

Robb

Gold Member
I feel they need a better stream of content.

I’ve played through and enjoyed both season one and two. But by the time I’ve finished the battle passes etc. there’s like 140 days left until the next season starts…
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
They just didnt realize that they need to pack the ghame wi th super dumb shit like monthly movie characters and idiotic dance emotes for the kids today.




If Halo had that as an emote it would do twice as good.
Or hear me out... have a steady flow of content in a timely manner.

Co-op was supposed to have been out already, and ... whelp. Incomplete single player stays incomplete, and the multi stays delaying as well.
 
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I enjoyed the game (multilayer) but the issue is content. Games like apex have kept me interested because they add characters with new mechanics and constantly update the maps.

The same can't be said for halo. The base game is there but for a GAAS game they need to add content constantly.
 

Banjo64

cumsessed
The writing was on the wall straight away to be honest.

270k concurrent players at launch on Steam when it’s the first Halo to drop day one and was F2P. When I had Halo 3 on the Xbox 360 it had 1 MILLION concurrent players.

Elden Ring had 953k concurrent players on Steam playing it at launch.

It’s been a really hard pill to swallow but I’ve just had to accept that I’m an old cunt and that Halo and Gears will never be ‘popular’ again.

Apex and Warzone 2 will be my go to shooters and I’m finally going to try Destiny 2.
 
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Aion002

Member
The lack of constant updates is the death of any "live service" game.

These types of games needs to be constantly updated with skins /characters/maps/modes or whatever the player base demands, otherwise most of the players will just leave.

Some studios refuses to accept that and learn with games like Fortnite and League of Legends.... The only thing they remember to copy from them are the microtransactions...

How Bizarre Reaction GIF
 

Fbh

Member
Initial player count shouldn't be taken as an overall metric of success, but I wouldn't call it meaningless.
Initial player count is a good way to measure interest in a game and I think Halo Infinite definitely generated a lot of interest at launch. The problem is that 343/MS haven't been able to sustain that interest, at least on PC (don't know how it's doing on Xbox)
 
I mean...saying a game hits 10 or 20M players or whatever the MS PR is nowadays means nothing.

Is it really that huge to have 10M people logging in once on a game that's "free" on a subscription service that has over 20M people and that's easy to get for 1 dollar, a game that's also on sale in multiple platforms including PC?

Halo had millions of players playing it at the same time almost 20 years ago and you had to actually pay those games...
 

22•22

NO PAIN TRANCE CONTINUE
Not my experience at all. Constant game after game. Sometimes it takes a minute or 2 sure. But I'm on Xbox does that matter?

Also important to note: some challenges require specific game modes so others may be far less populated/chosen.
 
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Its a shame because unlike most other FPS titles that have failed in the past few years, Halo Infinite gameplay is actually very good. It's simply the lack of Day One content and the absurdly long wait periods between significant updates/new maps that has, for all intents and purposes, killed the player count.
 

Kikorin

Member
Today release a multiplayer game without a plane to support it for years with a quick stream of new content is a suicide. CoD started the trend ages ago with introduction of levels, unlockable, etc... Then games like Fortnite raised the bar with Seasons and new content delivered every few weeks.

Funny how I spent my youth playing Counterstrike in De_Dust2. One map, no levels, no unlockable, no rewards for winning, just playing for the sake of getting better and better.

But I see how this is no more engaging, especially if you want to play for fun and not competitive.
 

Banjo64

cumsessed
Plenty of players on Xbox, easy to get games in any mode.
Have they added an option to turn off cross play now? As far as I know you can’t on PC, and on Xbox there’s no way to do it in game (or at least there wasn’t).

So any complaints about population are all encompassing.
 

Leyasu

Banned
I have criticised 343 and Halo infinite enough since launch, and will continue to do so.

But this thread is nothing but a troll thread and opening it up I was not in the least bit surprised to see a few well known hardcore Sony fanboys had already arrived.
 

ChorizoPicozo

Gold Member
I have criticised 343 and Halo infinite enough since launch, and will continue to do so.

But this thread is nothing but a troll thread and opening it up I was not in the least bit surprised to see a few well known hardcore Sony fanboys had already arrived.
zkd7Bsu.jpg
 
Have they added an option to turn off cross play now? As far as I know you can’t on PC, and on Xbox there’s no way to do it in game (or at least there wasn’t).

So any complaints about population are all encompassing.
I play on XSX. I believe only ranked multiplayer matches give you the option to limit the type of opponents you will face. You can toggle the selection so that you only match up with players who are using controllers and not a keyboard, but this could still be a PC player.
 
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