Thats highly unlikely that Halo 5 did not make MS profit, if that was the case they would consider to stop making Halo games and cancel Halo 6 and Halo Wars 2 etc. Guess what? there not doing that because Halo is too big. Theres too much profit protentional. With a half a billion revenue raise i can bet my chickens Halo 5 made a good profit for MS and Xbox.

Pure speculation, you can't prove any of this

You cant prove otherwise

the truth lays in between
i find both hard to believe. the 20/25% and the 50% figure

but 30-40% seems totally reasonable
the digital attachrate for different games, regions and demographics is so different.
while the overall 20% for AAA consolegames is a decent estimate, the figure for one special game could be way more or less

we know, that us digital attachrate is bigger compared to eu
we know hardcore games have a higher digital attachrates
we know online games tend to have a higher digital attachrates
we know xbox one has a (slightly) higher digital attachrate than ps4
i don't know, but i have a feeling that first party and exclusives have a higher digital attachrate compared to third party multiplats

but unless ms will disclose any numbers, we will never know the exact figure.

It would literally have to be the most expensive game ever made to have not made a profit.

The burden of the proof is from the one claiming

When 400M is counting several HW stuff (consoles, headsets, controllers) and our sales reports don't get even close on SW, I would say that 400M isn't entirely covering SW development cost. So we can't claim how much, if any, Halo have already profited.

But Azzanation was trying to Claim the game made 400M in profit, which is completely wrong.

Could it be that the franchise is simply just declining? I mean it would be natural, not everything (well basically nothing) can be as long lived as Mario or GTA.

Sonic, Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, Street Fighter, Resident Evil, etc. all had their time in the sun as the "it" franchise of the time before they just kinda got tired. Though SF and MK have kinda been rebooted, something like NBA Jam never was properly.

It's a old franchise, 15 years old. I think really what's happening is a lot of the Halo core fanbase that played Halo 1-3 are now in their 30s, many married and with kids, and once the kids come along, say bye-bye to long gaming sessions just for daddy.

The younger set of gamers that are now in their teens/early 20s didn't grow up with the earlier Halo games, Call of Duty is their go to shooter franchise, and Halo is behind about 3-4 other IP in that range too.

Aren´t you kind of pointing the finger back at yourself with that post considering your vague "they could loose money even if they made $500M"? :)