: All games are on decline. Even the big boys. In our Halo-preferred and
: Halo-isolated universe that we choose to live in because of our love for
: this game world, we don't many times take a look at other series. People
: elsewhere are talking about the decline of sales numbers, concurrent xbox
: live players and how the developers are taking the franchise in a
: direction the fans don't like.

: I think the rumors of Halo's (or Call of Duty's, etc) demise are greatly
: exaggerated.

I'm wondering if you really read my post, since that doesn't address what my arguments are. In addition to emphasizing the sharp decline Halo 4 has been showing (in rank relative to other games, not absolute population, mind you), I pointed out that Halo's competition is not showing sharp rank drops even remotely comparable to what Halo 4 is doing. Battlefield 3, for instance, has only dropped by six ranks since mid-November 2011, which was a matter of weeks after its initial release. The reason I don't buy the stuff you're saying is that I could make similar charts for Battlefield and for CoD, and they wouldn't tell the story that you're trying to sell as universal.

Compared to the similar big stuff out there, both historically and in the last couple of years, Halo 4's rank has shown poor momentum.

By itself that doesn't spell the end of the franchise, sure, but it's not a normal thing that everyone is experiencing.