: And to add to that, I'd still like to point out, again, that Reach was just
: only bumped out of the top 20 on that list as of September 30. Obviously
: Reach was doing something right, had the staying power, and btw, has
: "Halo" in the name. I agree with you that the evidence appears
: to be lacking as far as a decrease of demand in "classic Halo"
: or "Halo" in general goes beyond H4 sinking slowly but surely.

I don't know if "demand" is more or less - my point was really only that 343 decided to go a different direction, and it appears (on the surface at least) that they did what they set out to do. I commented about hindsight, and how things could have been done differently, and may or may not have been any more or less successful; there's no way we can really know.

How do you measure 'demand' (that would translate to greater 'success') for a product in an alternate timeline? :P Sure, there are many who would love a classic Halo. What about the silent majority? (there's always a silent majority) What would they want, and how big is that market? *shrug*

So just to backtrack, I never said (or at least meant to imply) that 'classic Halo' demand is less, or that the 'new generation' direction made Halo 4 more successful than otherwise - I don't know. Only that there are many factors that would need to be taken into considering regarding that game activity graph to interpret it in a way that would present an accurate linear comparison between games of various generations and consoles over the past decade. Taking it at face value is (IMO) not going to provide an accurate assessment.

ugh, I think I'm getting my threads crossed... =/