Halo Infinite is reportedly doing well, just not on Steam

Source

For our regular Gameplay Chart, we track around 2.5 million active Xbox accounts to find out which are the most-played games of each week. Sure, it's far from the full Xbox player base, but it's still comfortably a large enough sample size to get an accurate cross-section of what people have been playing. Contrary to those plummeting Steam numbers — the game has dropped from a concurrent peak of over 260,000 to below 10,000 players at the time of writing — our data from the last week actually shows a very slightincreasein Halo Infinite's Xbox player base, with more than 10% of all tracked Xbox accounts having played Infinite in the last seven days. You have to assume that the vast majority of that early influx in Steam players was purely due to the game's multiplayer being free, as we wouldn't expect Steam to be the platform of choice for many Halo fans to drop 50 quid on the game, especially with it being included in both Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass.

Granted, Infinite's player percentage has dropped off substantially since late last year, with around 25% of tracked players firing up the game in the week its free-to-play multiplayer launched in beta and an extremely impressive 30% of tracked players getting involved in Infinite's full launch week. But no game can expect to retain around a quarter of all Xbox users playing every week for long, and this is to be expected, with many key features still yet to arrive in the shooter and multiplayer offering a pretty bare-bones suite with a progression system that has put a good few noses out of joint. In fact, if we compare the current Halo numbers to similar titles and other big recent launches, having more than 10% of Xbox players on the game this long after launch is a feat not a single other game we checked can boast.Forza Horizon 5dropped to around 8% in the same timeframe (and even that is really solid), Call of Duty Vanguard never once even made it as high as that and hovered around the 5% mark two months in, while big Game Pass additions like Back 4 Blood and Outriders enjoyed explosive launches (17.5% and 12% respectively in their first full week) but quickly fell to around 4% within a month of release, both dropping further to around 1.5% by the end of their second month.

That Business Insider article also points to Twitch numbers to suggest interest in Infinite could be on the decline, but the simple truth there is that Halo has never been a particularly big deal on the streaming platform in the first place. The relatively slow, methodical gameplay is a far cry from the madness of the most popular games on Twitch — whether that's the controlled chaos of MOBAs like League of Legends and DOTA 2 or the fast-paced battle royale mayhem of Fortnite and Apex Legends — and it has neither the pace nor the pizzazz to hold the attention of the younger viewers who make up such a large portion of Twitch's audience. Halo Infinite has just shy of 600,000 followers on the streaming site, absolutely dwarfed by ever-popular games like Minecraft (43 million), GTA 5 (52.5 million), and Fortnite (81 million)... even The Master Chief Collection has only managed to pick up 1.5 million followers in almost a decade, with Halo 5 sat at 1.3 million, to give an idea of the comparative lack of love for the franchise on Twitch.

This couldn't be posted in the other thread?

No dude steam is the number 1 place to play the game if its doing bad on steam its doing bad.

great post. Halo infinite is actually a great game, and pretty fun. But im not as into FPS games as I used to, and the fps games that kids play these days aren't the old school halo type, but the pubgs, and fortnite. Halo is stuck in 2007, but these kids in 2022 don't play fps games like that anymore. Its a different world. Regardless, a ton of people still play the old school fps halo type games.

Personally I think 343 should experiment with the newer fps model, and they can get help from activision to do it too.

A live serive with no content is never doing well. Look at BF2042.

No

Yup. This success is confirmed on the Xbox chart from Microsoft.

@zerothehero: LOL, no.

No, because these are two different articles by two different sources with contradictory reports.

Confirmed by Microsoft directly today:

Steam metrics are flawed. I don't play BF through Steam, I play it through Origin. I don't play Halo through Steam, I play it through Game Pass. Many others do the same. PC does not revolve solely around Steam.

Certainly makes sense that this is where the bulk of the player base would be. The game is excellent so I look forward to returning to it even now and then as new content drops and it continues to grow.

This seems like the exact reason why it should...but whatever.

Not for a game that is also on console and on GamePass on PC.

If Steam was the only measurement then God of War would be a disaster.

Response thread 😄

I play the MP weekly, originally was playing on steam untill when the the SP released on gamepass, now I play both the MP and SP through the Xbox app on PC.

I feel like that's a big reason it's not as big on steam.

Well, this is awkward. I can't say that I care either way but this definitely affects some narratives.😅

And also being played on iOS and Android.

Yeah, God of War is almost out of the top 100 on Steam already. I guess God of War is a complete and utter flop. Bummer, I thought I liked it when I played it. According to the Steam player counts, I didn't enjoy it on my PS.

Wow Lems damage controlling hard! Had to make a new thread to flip the narrative....

Too bad that won't work on the Halo reddit, where the game is getting bashed all to hell

@williamjordan76: lmao, great first post @hardwenzen.

per usual, the "doom and gloom" and "concerned" folks who trip over themselves to get to their keyboards at the slightest hint of negative Halo news just need to calm down..

the game is doing fine.. the longterm is up to 343 and how they handle it from this point but it's off to a positive start..

@sargentd: yes exactly. Tons of pc gamers own gamepass. Why would they play Halo on steam? I'm guessing those are all people who normally play pubg, fornite, counterstrike. When halo released free multi-player these people tried it out, then after a few days left and went back to their normal games.

Damn^ cows out in full force today. Must be upset that the game is getting praised up and down at Halo Waypoint forums and media.

@Star67: wow you cows are crazy. You love halo so much you visit the halo reddit to trash it. There were even stories of ps fans that got excited over the bungie purchase, thinking halo was coming their way. This kind of obsession over halo isn't good.

Well, when cows have no games, this is their fall back.

@x_hedon: I don't get the hate they have for halo specifically. Maybe because it represents xbox and thats the reason. But the halo bashing threads has been going on for decades now. I would bash a ps5 game, but sadly they don't have any thing worth bashing.

Maybe bash all the 2023 new games coming to PS5 that Sony has announced.......

PC Gamers greatly prefer steam over the crappy xbox app. If Halo isn't doing well on steam, it isnt doing well in general on pc

You do know OP is not an Xbox fanny.😂 You Sony fannies are so silly.

Wow I didn’t knew that halo inf was doing that bad. Oh well, maybe next game it will do better

With Halo Infinite doing so well I have to wonder when we will get a roadmap of single player content.

Using steam as metric for an MS multiplat is obvious trolling or oblivious stupidity.

@vl4d_l3nin: yeah it's a dumb way to judge player count, especially because of gamepass, the MP is on the Xbox app on PC, if you want to play the SP campaign through gamepass you need to download the game through the Xbox app.

Most people are going to prefer to play the SP included with gamepass rather then paying $60 outright on steam, that's what I did anyways.

Game is also cross play with current gen and last gen Xbox, by not including the player counts on gamepass PC, Microsoft store, Xbox one, series X, and gamepass console, this is missing the majority of the player count.

@x_hedon: injoy it because its all going to change on Feb 18 lol. Hzd2 going to blow up the internet lol. Just kidding....kind of. That game is going to be the talked about game on top of elden ring.

Yeahhh, I'm pretty sure most PC gamers will be using Steam, even to play this game. This article seems like some MS sponsored damage control, but hey, a lot of the press is just advertisements.

OP works for microsoft i bet or something why is DC'ing for Halo INF we see the numbers they look bad nobody has x-series x or series s barely nobody is playing this on xbox barely.

They shipped with a pathetic amount of maps and the campaign was alright but not good enough for a replay until co-op is out.

I already dropped the game and given how stacked 2022 might be this year, I’m probably never coming back.

A whole lot of you don't play Halo, seem overly concerned by the games player count. Halo's audience, when it "bleeds" still ends up having a more active game than most games can hope for. The player count is a first world fucking problem for goons who woudl actually be invested in how the game makes money. Me or you, ie the player really shouldn't give two shits, the franchise n community is big enough to sustain a healthy multiplayer game. As of this post, there are 19k people playing the game on steam, and that's steam. The game is much bigger on its home console, and it has cross play.

No what it should get shit on for is

-NO fucking anti-cheat on a crossplay game.
-Complete lack of updates in terms of adding maps to the game
-The lack of modes that used to be franchise staples
-No road map to when content will be added

That sort of shit. Because the game itself, much like Halo 5, plays really good, but its a half finished ass feeling ass game. I got bored enough to play Sekiro instead. SEKIRO!? You know how much that game sucks?

Protoss clapped this thread

Incredible, that Business Insider article was so damaging xbot sites had to come up with narratives.

@gifford38: I have it and Elden Ring pre-ordered so I am all set.

@zerothehero: what on earth did you just say? 😂

This is the correct answer you guys. I didn't play the damn game on Steam, I play it on Game Pass and because it doesn't support cross-save which is a bummer but since I hardly have issues with Xbox app, I'm still playing Halo: Infinite just from the MP/Slayer FFA is all I'm doing.

As far as Steam chart goes, Steam maybe my personal client but it isn't the all be all and I play most of my EA games on Origin and not to mention GoG still remains my top client unless its a game that's not on the client than Steam it is. Steam's metrics has always been flawed, it doesn't tell the whole story the nature of the game itself.

Halos always will be the King of Salt.

Good stuff. :P

@x_hedon: Halo Infinite out of the top 4! Back to 5

@Pedro:you guys just keep flipping the narrative....MMMMMM love them salty tears, gosh so good

I LOVE watching xbots try to defend a broke ass Halo game, you got burned from an unfinished GAAS game, **** those tears taste so good. Like jesus this is almost as good as Zelda TP 8.8 good.

Look at my sig. Does it look like its doing well? It does't. Its ill. Very ill. Infinitely ill.