: The real hunger in the market is for fast-paced twitch shooters with loadouts
: and classes, complex weapon builds, and one-shot kills. Halo isn't and
: never has been that game. Once that game was on the market in the form of
: CoD, though, all the gamers who made do with Halo jumped ship. Now all
: that's left are the fans who actually prefer arena-style shooters to
: twitch shooters.

This was not your original argument:

So what has changed since 2007? Simply put, there is far more competition on the market. Call of Duty has taken off in popularity. New shooters like Titanfall are imitating CoD's fast-paced, twitch-shooter gameplay. And there is a stunning array of AAA first-person action/adventure titles and western RPGs on the market that simply weren't around when Halo 3 launched. When Halo 1, 2, and 3 were released, there was no Bioshock. There was no Assassin's Creed. There was no Borderlands. There was no Mass Effect, Dragon Age, or Skyrim. Far Cry 3? GTA 5? There was the occasional AAA title on the 360 to compete for our time, but nothing like the avalanche of quality we get today.

If you want to argue that there are a group of gamers who want to play competitive FPSs, and the COD franchise caters to their desires closer than the Halo franchise does, and Halo's early success was due to it being their best option for these players in a COD-less world, okay.

But your original argument was that Halo 4 never could have topped the charts consistently because there are too many other AAA games available like Skyrim and Mass Effect. BLOPS2 and Minecraft's success demonstrate that it is possible.