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: Bungie did not think H2 and H3 were perfect. This is obvious. But they were
: both tremendous successes, commercially, critically, and among the
: Halo-savvy (save for that guy who made halo2sucks.com). Halo 2 was a
: video-game release like the world had never before seen. It dwarfed all
: competition in sales, owned Xbox Live, and basically drove MLG. Bungie
: being unhappy with a lack of saved films or rushed ending does not take
: away from this, and it's a wildly different situation from that which 343
: find themselves in with Halo 4.
: Halo 2's reception wasn't an excuse to "rest on their laurels," but
: rather a validation of what they've been doing. Halo 4's reception has
: given no such validation. It's a game that sold moderately well (for a AAA
: title) due to (1) the brand strength built by Bungie's games, and (2) a
: furious marketing campaign fueled by infinite MSbux.
: We can assume the bulk of the game sales occurred between NOV and DEC 2012.
: But without having access to the plot of game sales over time, the
: production+marketing budget (likely astronomical), and DLC sales numbers,
: we don't have much to go on regarding the current and future strength of
: the franchise. Our best indicators are (1) XBL population, and (2) the
: opinions of the community of people who care. (2) does not include
: reviewers and journos who picked the game up near launch, played through
: the campaign, thought "wow such graphics, many emotion" before
: stamping it 9.5/10 and moving on. It includes competitive players, content
: creators, and others. The opinion among this set is largely negative, far
: more than it was after H3 or even Reach. (1) is not looking good at all
: (relatively -- the makers of John Cena & The Undertaker vs Outer
: Space Aliens from Outer Space would be thrilled with H4's XBL
: performance), and if you think you can infer DLC sales (excluding the
: season pass) by XBL population circa DLC releases, they barely even
: registered.
: Halo 5's success will hinge on how well it differentiates itself from Halo 4.
: That is the bad spot 343's in.
Okay. Whatever.
You have zero information about anything other than actual sales numbers (and those are sketchy; NeoGAF bans VGChartz data because it's untrustworthy in a lot of cases), so you've made up a whole slew of potential markers above (all the while ADMITTING you have no real data), and then try to draw conclusions from that pile of fuzz.
You can't. You can say you're unhappy with Halo 4. You can say that a lot of the people you've heard from, personally (and by personally I'm including 'read on a forum even if I've never talked to them'), that Halo 4 was more of a disappointment than previous titles (we're ignoring the HUGE backlash against Reach when it came out - the backlash that pretty much lasted until Halo 4 was released, in fact, when folks had something new to lash back at) - but you can't make any real conclusive statements about what this means.
I generally stay out of these discussions because they're not particularly productive; we make a bunch of assumptions, then we argue based on these assumptions. Then years down the road people point back to the arguments they made, and if by some miracle they guessed right about something, they say "see? I nailed that, years ago."
Every once in a while, I'll try to inject a LITTLE reality - or back up someone who is already doing that. (Cody played that role this time around.) But once I've said my piece, I'm done; if you're not going to accept that you're arguing about things you don't have any real data on, there's not a lot left to say.
Look: if Halo 5 crashes and burns, sells 100,000 copies on its first day and goes downhill from there... I'll come back here and say "yeah, I guess you guys were right; 343 totally didn't get their audience." I'm not particularly worried I'm going to have to do that, though.
And even if I did... Cody's ALSO right when he says that if a game franchise has moved away from what made you love it, and you have a few years' experience telling you that nobody's listening to you when you say that... maybe it's time to find another game.
If I felt the way about Halo that you guys felt about Halo, right now - I'd shutter this place. That simple. Why put time and effort into something you think is a waste?