Halo Infinite No Longer In Xbox Live's Top Five As Player Numbers Decline

That's a huge shame and I hope content drops help to turn it around.

I didn't really rate the Campaign tbh, but the core gameplay and mechanics are so tight I thought it would stay popular in MP for a long time. It needs to - Xbox needs Halo, and it needs it to be good and popular too.

Just needs more content. Forge will help a ton and Coop campaign too. Got a lot to play and I've been leaning on coop games much more then competitive games.

343 have a lot to answer for. I enjoyed the campaign but even that was lacking variety with its biomes and levels. No co-op either.

I don’t really have any interest in the multiplayer, but this isn’t great. Taking months to fix issues, a weird progression system and general lack of content I’m sure are leading to people moving on. For a studio with hundreds of millions of $ in funding, they’ve mishandled Halo on all fronts for nearly a decade.

The easy answer is ranked is a dumpster fire. The matchmaking system is really bad. You’ll often play people well above your rank and get destroyed which is fun for no one. You also often get a few points increase in rank for a win but can lose 10-15 in a game because the system “thought” you should have won the game. My friends have quit playing because they got so fed up with the system. It’s truly a shame because the shooting is phenomenal.

I don't disregard the reasons listed here. But I wanted to add one more as a possibility. Those of use who were around to play Halo during an impressionable time have a nostalgic connection to the franchise. Thus, I think a lot of us, plus the more modern gamers (who are used to Games as a Service) flocked to Halo Infinite when it released. This created huge numbers. I can't speak for other "old-timey's" but I had fun with it for a bit, but I never seem to be able to stick around with any "Games as a Service". I often get tired trying to keep up with the daily/weekly stuff and I'm not sure how to articulate it, but these types of games just have a different vibe than before. I honestly get an exhausted feeling from playing these types of games. They encourage playing games for external reasons instead of intrinsic ones. So I suspect, a lot of old-timey's came in... tried it out, got tired and left.

I think from a MP point of view the grand suffers from desync issues. It’s hard to enjoy a game which you can’t trust the core mechanics on.

Also we seem to be in a cycle of events. I guess the events aren’t interesting enough for people to stick around.

I used to love Tactical Slayer (SWAT) but it’s just not that fun on Infinite given possibly desync and maybe even the maps. There’s just not enough.

Contradicting said all that. I am looking forward to the Tactical Ops and it’s fresh spin on tactical slayer.

Need more maps and more modes.

I'm still having fun with it, but there are definitely some issues...
Some of the maps have already began to feel a little stale. Respawn points are a joke, resulting in near instant deaths.
Weapon balancing still needs to be addressed. The Ravager and Sentinel Beam are garbage.
The weekly challenges become a grind & divert focus away from having fun to doing a checklist of mundane chores.
Shop items are still way overpriced.
Progression system is slow.
Forge will save this title - as usual, once the tools are in the hands of the community, there will be an abundance of goods maps & modes, but until then it's rather weak & still has me wanting to return to Halo 5.

Unfortunately it’s not 2008 and halo isn’t the biggest thing anymore. It was the multiplayer to play at the time but with the rise of so many multiplayers, a lot of younger gamers move on quick. My friends kid who plays games makes fun of halo for no reason. Just to say it’s for old guys. It was disappointing to hear but that’s new gamers in a nutshell. A lot of us halo fans will stick around and enjoy it but the gaming landscape has changed dramatically. So many people won’t.

@Fenbops
There are a lot of service games that have started off far inferior to Halo Infinite. They did have many MP betas beforehand so I don't think people should be too hard on them for MP issues. People seemed really happy with the betas.

I played the campaign and am disappointed there was no co-op and no revisiting missions. But, it was the best Halo campaign since Halo Reach in my books. I finished the campaign a week ago, and now have removed the game from my fast NVMe drive and will go back to my backlog until they get the game to where it should be.

This by no means is an excuse or should not be construed that i support what MS has done. But, reality states that this is how most service games are launching now-a-days. Incomplete. MS is not an exception, they are just following what others are doing. Good and bad.

If Sea of Thieves is any indicator, MS will be making this game a lot more elaborate and continuing to make it better and better.

I'm still getting in matches super quick whenever I play so I'm wondering if it's as bad as people are suggesting. One reason could be a lot of people have maxed out the battle pass already and are waiting for either an event like the Cyber event or the next battle pass.

That's how I engage with it. I love Halo but I like to play other things too. I'm playing Sifu for example on PS5 and February is going to be pretty busy for game releases so I can't say I'm too shocked to see it's numbers drop a little.

The game feels like it's still in beta, it doesn't feel done, and it isn't done.
It needs better game mode selection like in MCC, it needs co-op, it needs forge, it needs the customization options that were in the trailer, it needs to get finished.
The presentation is very bland.

The problem is that fanboys don't allow for open communication about a game that clearly isn't ready for primetime.

It's the most half-assed release of a AAA game I've ever seen.

It definitely feels like Microsoft forced the holiday 2021 launch to try to increase Game Pass subscription numbers. With the Activision acquisition being done around the same time, Microsoft probably had in their minds that between Starfield and CoD 2022 day 1 on Game Pass there wouldn't be room for Infinite in holiday 2022.

Following "the narrative" of this game has been an exercise in futility. Constantly bouncing between 343 needs to stop making halo and 343 has redeemed itself.

Is 6th most played even bad?

I only quit cause it just doesn't feel good on a pad. The frustration at things mount an then I do something else. I play MCC every so often for the halo fix atm, just feels better there on pad.

@Medic_Alert I’ve been arguing with one of my friends who hates GamePass about what you said. I hope it’s not the case because I think that would lead developers to putting more cheap games and live service gotcha games over quality. ☹️

I know it's par for the course for live service games to lose players when there's no new content for a while and then for it to spike when there's a new content drop, but this is concerning for a massive game like Halo. It's also concerning since this is a 10-year F2P game and they need high player counts so they can sell micro transactions. I personally have gotten bored and don't see myself buying another battle pass

@Medic_Alert This is a good point. GP has made games disposable. I played Halo for a few hours. Thought it was okay, deleted it and moved on. If I had spent £50 on it I wouldn't have given up so easily. Even last gen some of my favourite games I had to persevere with but GP there's no real need to.
In fact the biggest struggle I have is with the bigger RPG style games. Unless I'm gripped constantly I'll just move onto the next game. Don't need to try and understand the levelling up system or trek from point A to point B as game #126 is ready for me to try out immediately.

I feel like this is going to be a Sea of Thieves situation where the game launched with little content (and in the case of Halo, a poor online component) but over time gets more and more content (and fixes) added to it that it eventually becomes good. I mean, Sea of Thieves is doing very well now but how many people here remember how it started out? Lots of people played it at launch, then people complained about the lack of content among other things and dropped it shortly thereafter. Now I'm seeing tons of people playing it on Xbox and Steam.

Considering it's Halo, I'm sure it'll bounce back up. 343 should just focus on having the online portion as a live service and keep updating it because they still have a lot of work to do and they're clearly not up to the task of making both single-player and multiplayer components at the same time. Because the Halo Infinite campaign was great, but it's clear that multiplayer was more of an afterthought and didn't get as much development time as it needed. So for next Halo, they should make a new campaign but keep the same multiplayer from Infinite.

@Medic_Alert other examples of a service pattern very much support such claim. It is not a world we used to live in anymore (where gamers played through Metroid so many times, that bugs had to be kept in re-releases because they became part of expected gameplay).
Nor, as relatively recent examples of Halo and Forza community numbers are suggesting, are people sticking with a game for extended periods of time. It's a plenty of offering, low investment, no attachments, kind of world. In such circumstances it's easier to overlook issues and negatives, which is an incentive to developers to get the game out of the door and move on to the next one (all of this doesn't apply to GaaS model, which is a complete opposite, with high investment, where a single games content is essentially the service).

@Dijita This is exactly me. I played and loved the first Halo with my buddies and siblings. We’d spend weekends having LAN parties, lugging our enormous televisions to each other’s houses. Infinite was fun for a little bit, but overall I just don’t have the time or energy to devote to something like this like I used to. I stopped playing after the first week and at this point I have no desire to return to it. And that’s not really a knock on the game itself, which I found to be immensely fun overall. Keeping up with everything feels to me like work a lot of the times, instead of simply having fun and being rewarded naturally; the game instead tells you what you have to do and how to do it and if you don’t then it feels like you’re missing out. To me, that’s not rewarding.

Lack of game modes
Lack of variety of maps
Taking weeks and weeks to fix big team battle
Ranking is a mess.
The transactions completely over priced if that’s your bag.
Etc etc

It's all because of those stupid challenges they put in the game.. Why not just have a kill based XP progression like every other multiplayer game 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

I can't answer what Halo 'needs' as I don't like Halo's MP - never have. I was part of the 'numbers' because I was playing Campaign and once that Campaign is finished, then I stop playing Halo.

Halo was ALWAYS campaign focussed and the MP initially was a 'bonus' mode for those who paid for Gold and to me, I bought Halo's for the Campaign.

I think things like co-op and Forge mode will inject more 'life' into Halo: Infinite. I'm sure that others have an opinion on what the MP needs (beyond patching to 'fix' what's already offered) but 'content' (new Maps, modes etc do help) and rewards are key. If you don't get XP (or 'reduced' XP if you play more),don't feel you are progressing/rewarded enough or the 'Grind' is too much, these will push people away instead of encouraging them to play more...
Over-priced cosmetics also push all but the most dedicated away too and constantly seeing them in customisation menu's is annoying too- like seeing ALL the cars in Forza when you can only 'buy' a small fraction of them because the rest are all 'DLC' cars is off-putting and frustrating.

Boredom.

Halo is at this point as fine tuned as a professional football match but one can only watch or play this sort of way for a finite amount of time.

It lacks the inherent chaos of having a kick around with your mates down the park where you can make up your own modified versions and its just a laugh. The closest gaming has to this is probably Fortnite.

I got hate for suggesting this would happen.

The game as it is, is too much like other games, in both mechanics and features to pull ahead of other titles. Everyone that likes the new things that Halo Infinite does, can find those things elsewhere (and in a lot of cases, done better). Meanwhile, those that liked what Halo did, can't find that anywhere else. The classic fanbase is a shrinking community, but they'd be the most loyal one. As with Halo 4 and 5, a mixed design pleases no-one.

Unless you honestly think that the rumoured Halo Battle Royale mode is going topple Fortnite, Warzone, and Apex Legends, then you know this.

Another issue is trying to overcook the titles. 6 years, hundreds of millions of dollars, and 6 or 7 different developers doesn't make a better product. The scale of development for the titles should been scaled down, rather than trying to scale the MP up in to a live service bastardisation of the franchise. Games like Minecraft, fortnite, Apex Legends aren't the rule, they are the exception. Just because they launched content lite and found a massive audience doesn't mean you will. Releasing a full featured, fully finished game, that receives some nice post launch free content (kinda like Splatoon) would actually be pretty revolutionary in today's market.

I'm mostly loving it... and I haven't always got along with halo MP in the past.

However, could definitely do with some additional interesting maps for both QP and BTB, as it feels a little thin.
Also, some of the weapons need tweaking to make them really competitive.

But on the whole, I'm having a blast with this 👍

For Game Pass to be successful, it needs games people really want to play to the point they are willing to pay a monthly fee for instead of buying the game. These games may well be £50+ on release, but most games 'drop' in price if you wait and you don't 'need' to play on day1.

Therefore, these games need to be games you want to play as soon as possible, with 'new' games coming 'every' month to entice 'new' and keep existing subscribers in your service every month. MP numbers could 'fluctuate' as the 'new' big game this month is a MP game so people could be checking out R6:Extraction this month whilst they wait for fixes, more content etc to come to Halo.

I couldn't or wouldn't want to keep playing 'just' Halo for a few months. In the past, If I bought a MP game, I probably only had that 'new' game and wouldn't have money to buy a 'new' game until next payday at the earliest so had much less games to compete for my time. Now, its competing with new games I can play every week - let alone all those other FPS MP games - free to play and of course 20+ yrs of BC games too. Halo players maybe went back to playing MCC with so much more content and Forge modes until H:I has more content/forge...

Windows central had a great article on the issues that are likely turning folks away from the game.

I'm personally still in love with it and can easily play it for hours on end. But for more competitive players the issues with cheating, lack of new content and issues with BTB, lack of forge and co-op are listed as major reasons for the drop. Lots of games to play so if you lose people's interest they will just jump into something new.

I uninstalled the other day. The MP wasn't for me and the campaign got very samey.

As said above the fact that I paid no more than my gamepass sub definitely made it easier to delete. If I spent £50 or £60 on it I'd have seen it through to the end. Forza 5 has managed to keep my attention though so not all gamepass games are easily disposable to me.

343i Launched a buggy, incomplete game. Yes, most GaaS launch buggy and incomplete but this was was a year late after a long dev cycle, and that probably combines to have an impact. How can a game that late feel like a rushed launch? IDK, but it did.

But more than that, this is just the nature of GaaS in a nutshell. It either hits the zeitgeist and sticks, hits the zeitgeist and misses, or never really hits at all. That's why Phil has said he wants to see more single player and less emphasis on GaaS for Game Pass (but won't force devs hands on it, it's just a preference/wish for the service), and that's why it's kind of inexplicable that Sony is starting to go full force chasing the GaaS model. Even if Halo launched perfectly and with tons of content, there's no guarantee it wouldn't start slipping like this. Sometimes good stuff just doesn't catch on, sometimes garbage stuff does, and with live services, I'm not sure the quality or completeness of the product even matters much compared to what currently lands on high-school social trends by random chance and some stupid video that did something at the right time. From the Jitterbug to the Macarena to the backpack kid thing, to Fortnite and Cod, these thing just become the stupid fad of the moment regardless of what they are or if they're good.

Halo can be ok not being in the top 5. 343's blundering may contribute to that, or maybe just the latest social trend does and it has nothing to do with the game. Service games like that just tend to run like TV and The Bachelor pulls a lot more ratings than Game of Thrones. Such is the human couch potato.

Big Team Battle was broken for 2 straight months and there's not been a single new map added yet.

@ParsnipHero I’m kinda in that. I don’t have the desync issues you’re having (gameplay is great for me) but I played a ton during the cyber event and don’t really care about the Samurai event.

Also I LOVED attrition and it’s already gone. I hate Fiesta because if you get terrible weapons you’re done because the other guys probably have rockets, swords or rams. Since Fiesta is the only event mode it turned me off.

Here are the current top 6 in most played on xbox.

Fortnite
Call of duty warzone
Grand theft auto 5
Alex legends
Roblox
halo infinite

It is "losing" to 5 of the most popular games of all time. These games have seen unprecedented levels of success. If you thought an old franchise like Halo was going to sit at number 1 for the rest of time then your expectations were way too high. Just be happy that it is still beating other timeless juggernauts like Rainbow 6 seige, rocket league, etc.

It is a very realistic possibility that the top 5 will be very similar if not the same in 2 years. These games just dont die.

Waiting for the Warzone mode, was the only I played in Halo 5. And there was progression after every match, here is almost nothing.

I'm still playing it regularly and have no trouble finding any matches in any of the modes. It definitely needs forge and co op and some more content but the core gameplay keeps it going for me. It could be a lot worse too just look at the dumpster fire of BF 2042

@Bmartin001 absolutely agreed
I forgot about that too
Absolutely can’t stand the dumb challenged rather than rewarding you for playing well.
Instead let’s make the player base play game modes or use weapons they don’t want to.

As expected. They ruined the XP progression sistem on the battle pass. You can only get XP with this stupid weekly challenges. once you finish them there is no incentive at all to continue playing. Whoever though that wa a good system is the responsible of the game loosing players. otherwise, the game is amazing and i love it.

@xMightyMatt14x honestly it may not be as prolific as I'm making out but it crack like questioning accuracy of a core mechanic that crack only starts getting bigger and bigger.

Don't get me wrong. I've played daily since beta launch and enjoy myself. I'm here to see the game succeed but I won't going near ranked until some of these major issues are fixed.

Where are they getting their numbers? Anyone know?

TA has it still in second based on their data of a sample of Xbox users: https://www.trueachievements.com/news/type/chart

And that’s based on 2 million global users.

For context Destiny sits at around 60k average right now and it's before an expansion, a typical dead/slow time for the game.

•Big Team Battle was down for too long.
•Players would have enjoyed a better Free progression system.
•Forge and Co--op are a bigger draw than 343 realized.

There is way more to nitpick about, without saying.

I’m just waiting for the co-op

More maps, more unlockables in the campaign, less annoying weekly challenges OR more rewarding rewards for those challenges. They could add more power ups in different seasons, throw in newer guns, bring back Elites and Elite armor. Horde mode. I mean there's a lot of content they can add for sure. Having your medals from matches add up to something would be great, even if it's just an icon for armor or gun, like get 50 Killing Sprees and you unlock a skin or something for your guns. Maybe for getting a bunch of Melee kill medals, you unlock a stock for your assault rifle that looks like a club. List goes on and on for creative options here.

It was a fun bit of nostalgia for a few weeks but multiplayer shooters with their mindless respawning are only really fun when you have a bunch of mates to play with (and don't have an extensive backlog of other terrific games).

This makes me happy. Not gonna lie. This is what happens when you release a broken, unfinished game. Looks like the denial phase is over as people jump ship.

It takes too long to join a match. That and consistent server failures seal its fate, methinks.

I probably would have played it more, but quickly felt regret at paying full retail. I purchased the og Xbox and Halo on release day and have very fond memories of that game, but haven't played a Halo since 3. I was excited as this looked like a return to form for the series. I liked it for a while and the shooting is fantastic. But ended getting bored with campaign as it kind of felt like a chunk of some Ubisoft game. Might have felt better about if I could have explored it with a friend, but no. Multiplayer is bare bones, a bit unstable and honestly other F2P have done better. I paid for a full game and expected a full game, by my standards it was not one. It provided very little of the excitement and full experience previous Halo games have. Thankfully the superb FH5 is still on my system

I enjoyed the game a lot but stopped playing cause the cheaters were out of control. Will not go back till they fix those issues.

All the reasons posters have given above are valid as to why Halo Infinite is already losing interest. For me personally, it was the very fast realization that 343 had released a 70 percent complete game with a stripped-down campaign (with no variation in environments/weather that even the two-decade-old original Halo managed to accomplish), no local splitscreen multiplayer or campaign co-op, and no Forge to make the Christmas sales window, citing, among other factors, COVID. Oh, but they had the time to incorporate thousands of dollars worth of Fortnite wannabe skins to monetize said 70 percent complete game. It's their PRIORITIES that showed in bold, all-caps lettering to me. 343 made this bed for themselves and this game, and now they're going to have to lie in it. Players will begin returning when Halo Infinite is a fully-featured videogame FIRST instead of a microtransaction machine trying to disguise itself as a game.

Eh, it was good to me. I didn’t buy it and dropped a lot of hours into the campaign and multiplayer.

It’s enjoyable reading the comments and watching you all articulate how you feel about this one. Also refreshing to see it hasn’t devolved into an argument.

I stopped playing because of the forced crossplay.
Remove that and I jump back in.

As soon as co-op is implemented, I will start playing it. I really want to play the campaign together with my kids on the couch. I am waiting for the co-op. Should have been a feature at launch.

My gaming group (Mostly PC gamers in their 30's and 40's) tried Halo Infinite when it launched then gave up pretty quickly, saying "Don't like games where the enemy are a bullet sponge" I can see what they mean to some extent, if you're used to a lot of modern shooters.
Personally I'm quite enjoying the game, both campaign and multiplayer. But I don't like the way the event challenges end up dominating my challenge list, I'd like to play another mode thanks and still get the opportunity to progress my battle pass.

@Medic_Alert
Great points and I agree with you wholeheartedly.

I do sub to GP ultimate of course, its far too good value to not do, but I've long been of the opinion it has devalued games to the point where few would consider buying full price games, and games looking to recoup dev costs are likely to monetize the experience either via micro transactions or being live service with 'add ons'.
I had hoped that 1st party titles might be spared that necessity, but looking at recent 1st party titles they seem to be leading the charge towards this way of gaming. As a comparator, I'm not aware of a single Sony first party title with any microtransactions at all - and given what they cost, it had better stay that way!
Games pass already is altering the way games are designed for Xbox, which worries me for the future, so I hope my fears prove to be unfounded.

I don't think I even got through the intro level. Co-op would be nice. The game fell flat for me. I just figured I'd give it some time.

The problem is that MCC is available for the older fans and Infinite has finished being flavour of the month(s) for new fans.

I believe those who left will come back. After surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome