I disagree with a lot of his characterizations about Reach, though unfortunately he's right about a lot of the reasons people quit playing it (while totally missing far more legitimate complaints regarding Reach's gameplay), but he does seem to nail it with H4. If anything he doesn't nail it well enough. Reach's map choices were, yes, pretty sad. I'd say H4's maps are just a tiny bit better. Unfortunately, H4's maps still suck, and that's not just referring to the lack of 4v4 options. I pretty much hate the BTB maps and at this point I still see no redeeming qualities or fixes. Team Throwdown is in, but after having spent more time playing it, I'm learning to hate it, too. Too forced, too narrowed, and doesn't allow for a diverse range of competitive content and gameplay like H2 and H3 did. It's unfortunate.

343 is fixing many things, and I've been enjoying them. Some fixes are still a joke or not even fixes at all (I'm looking at you, X's). But the point of the article ends up being correct. Regardless of what the population numbers truly are, there's no denying that people aren't around. I play more Reach than H4 still. There are others games for me to play and other things for me to do rather than play H4.

If not for my friends here at HBO, to be completely honest, I wouldn't be back on it at all, period (unless I went in to play Spartan Ops). I don't know how many others there are out there like me, so who knows if it's even statistically significant, but it's still surprising that after playing Halo nonstop since H1, it's a battle for friends to even get me onto H4, and even then it's few and far between that I'll give in and go on (though Forge Island and helping test fun things has definitely helped). The other thing that keeps me coming back from time to time is because I know there are people at 343 who get it and do their job really well and really truly give a damn about the community and want this game to succeed (or at least succeed as best it can considering how it launched). Some have been hired recently to try and stop the bleeding, others (like Pete alluded to in another thread) saw massive problems and potentially took on expanding Forge and whatnot on their own. I just wonder if some of these fine people don't have as much say as they should due to who knows what from Microsoft or due to certain other people at 343.

And the question of H5, which he poses, is whether or not people will even bother. Well, I know that I sure as hell don't want to bother. If you had asked me three weeks ago if I'd be buying it or even playing it, the answer would have been a very confident "no way in hell" without a second thought. The fixes to multiplayer are giving me some hope, but at the same time I'm almost wondering how they'll find ways to dumb down, hand hold, and release a broken product for H5 multiplayer, and after H4's campaign, I'm not holding my breath for H5's. I'm on the fence now, and I think it's a "rent first" or "wait until Microsoft laughingly drops the place to $40 or $50 after a month from launch" to buy. Time will tell what happens, obviously.