We all do it someday, mate. Why, a few weeks back, I responded to a month-old post.

: I didn't say reaching a new demo was a smart move
: (see below: I effectively said I don't know if it was), I said smart move
: "for them" - probably not worded the best.

Probably not. "For them" can be interpreted as meaning it was smart for them to do, or that it looked to them like the smart thing to do.

: They felt it was a
: smart move. They hit their intended target. (Well, I suppose only they
: really know if they accomplished their intended release goals; if they are
: happy with the results)

Ah, this takes me back to my summer job, where we could only guess at the motivations of our plant* manager. Of course, the only explanation that made sense was that he was off his medication and trying to divine the will of his superiors by reading tea leaves.

Oh, yeah. Fun times.

*Food processing plant. Darn the ambiguity of the English language!

: Dunno. But I liked it. I wasn't in love with it, but I liked it.
: That's enough for me. It doesn't matter to me so much -how or why- they
: came to create the game they did, only that they create a game (and
: continue the franchise) in a way that I'll enjoy.

Except that the hows and whys of how they screwed up in Halo 4 determine whether they'll continue creating games in the way that you like.

: And hopefully for a
: broad audience, so it doesn't fizzle out to the point of TPTB closing the
: franchise. =/

Yeah, I guess that Halo is going to suffer if the Market Forces can't afford their platinum hubcaps.
.-. .- -.. .. --- / -.- .- --- ... ---... / .-.. .. ...- . / .. -. / .-.. --- ... / .- -. --. . .-.. --- ...

More seriously, if Halo has nowhere to go but down, it's better to let it die. It can be saved and even improved with better writers, yes, but if it's not going to get those writers...

: Read my paragraph again. I claimed nothing except "I don't know" if
: there's another direction that would have been better for the Halo
: franchise on the whole; whether it would have fizzled if they kept the
: same direction, or thrived more than it is now with a new direction.

You don't know, so you refuse to take a position?

: Who knows.

I know that I didn't see Halo declining before Halo 4, and I KNOW that there was plenty of area to explore without resurrecting the Forerunner as vampires.

: The only point is - it is where it is now, love it or hate it.
: There is a strong community that loves it. If that was their intention,
: then we can't convince them they "failed" unless they come to
: think that the community of fans they left behind, as it were, are
: essential to their long term plans.

*shrugs*
Maybe not, but I can still get angry about it.

: So, maybe, in Halo 5, they'll reconcile and release a game that will appeal
: to a wider audience.

Wasn't 'appealing to a wider audience' the driving force behind Halo 4?

: Maybe they'll have 'better' writing. Or maybe they'll
: just keep going the way they're going (the COD-style argument, eg). We'll
: see soon enough.

Watching their GDC postmortem, I am of two minds about this. First of all, they seem to realize that they screwed up, and a lot of the mistakes they made seem to have come from growing pains and an inflexible release schedule.

On the other hand, they screwed up on basic stuff, and didn't seem to realize that they did screw up. And I quote:

"But there were players that felt that his motivations were not clear. And we were, like, surprised by this because we thought that his motivations in the game were pretty simple. He's a badass alien who reawakened and he wants to obliterate humanity."

That, right there, is a failure of Creative Writing 101.