While Halo Infinite debuted with great reviews and a lot of talk about it being a “return to form” for the series, the game has struggled to retain players past its initial launch period.
We are only two months post-launch, though closer to three for the early release of multiplayer, and near midway through the game’s first six month season.But Halo Infinite has fallen outside Xbox’s top 5 most played games , sitting at #6 behind long-term leaders it was unable to unseat for any significant lengthy of time.
The top games are:
Fortnite Call of Duty Warzone GTA 5 Apex Legends Roblox Halo Infinite
Halo Infinite, of course, is free on Xbox Game Pass, and its multiplayer component is free without Game Pass, so that’s not a barrier here.
On Steam, things have crashed pretty hard.At the time I’m writing this, Halo Infinite is the #117 most played game on Steam .Granted, it can shoot up quite a bit during different times of the day, but even at “peak hours” when I looked yesterday, it was hovering around 40th place instead.Fact is, the game has lost about 90% of its players on Steam in 2-3 months.
What’s going on here? A few things.
Halo Infinite has undergone a number of issues, particularly in regard to its multiplayer.
It turned off a number of players with microtransaction pricing and battle pass progression, and though it has made large overhauls in those areas, it may be too late for some.
MORE FOR YOU ‘Demon Slayer’ Season 2 Finally Has An Actual 2021 Release Date Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ Season 2 Not A Sure Thing, Says Director ‘Genshin Impact’ Still Refuses To Increase Anniversary Rewards, Despite Fan Outcry There are issues with cheaters, particularly on PC, which may explain further departures.And ranked Halo Infinite play has been pretty messed up from the start, and recently it seems it was revealed that your Quick Play MMR factors into your ranked experience, so players are purposefully tanking games in that mode to get easier matches in ranked, screwing up the entire experience.
And then there are more general problems with the entire concept of Infinite, something a few high profile streamers talked about ahead of launch and were chastised for, but they might be…right.
The fact is, traditional team-based shooters have fallen out of favor, which is Halo’s bread and butter.On console, you can see that three of the top five titles are battle royale games.
On Steam, the top shooters there are “no respawn” tactical team games like CSGO or Valorant.It’s worth nothing that Call of Duty Vanguard and Battlefield 2042 are also even further down these lists, games with much bigger issues than Infinite has, in addition to being traditional team-based offerings.
This isn’t to say a battle royale would have definitely boosted Halo Infinite, but it’s worth considering in the current shooter landscape.If Halo Infinite is meant to be a “platform” for a full generation of Halo offerings to come, it seems like 343 may have to figure out how to expand the series for longer term engagement, even if their initial numbers were great.
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Paul Tassi.
