| captain carot said: PS2 had a userbase almost as big as PS360 have together. About Halo sales: Halo 3 was the (retail) peak. Roughly doubled Halo 2 sales. But at that time there weren't that much other FPS with a really great MP. And it had the effect that many early games on a platform share. Look at GT, MGS or FF. FF VII sold way more than VIII and IX. And FF X again sold better tha the late FF XII. So with some usual effects for later sequels on a specific platform you can't really say that Halo declined after 3. If there's a decline it happened on Xbox One. |
MGS4: sold in line with prior MGSs. Didn't need to be multiplatform
GT5: sold in line with prior GTs. Didn't need to be multiplatform (albeit, that would never happen anyway). In fact, PS franchises in general sold in line with their PS2 counterparts, and PS3 had half the userbase of PS2. And if not the same franchise, then the same developer (Uncharted vs Jak, Infamous vs Sly, etc) sold in line or better than their prior work, despite being handicapped by half the prior userbase.
Point being, userbase doesn't have everthing to do with it (whether comparing Halo to prior Halos or multiplatform games to prior exclusive games). XBOne "has more consoles sold than XB360 in the same time period", Halo 5 came out in the same time window Halo 3 came out (almost 2 years after the console released), it's the "first Halo (proper) on the console" (that "effect that many early games" you referred to) which apparently means people were just salivating to get it, and whatever factors MS likes to point out. Yet, it sold less than 1M in the US, which isn't bad, in a vacuum, but bad for the bread and butter flagship MS title when you know what the series is truly capable of.
I think it's better to accept that 343i just isn't as capable of making compelling Halo games, instead of just blaming it on "well, the franchise is old anyway".
All these years on this site, and people always talked about "you can't play sales" (pretty much the PS3 fan motto from 2006 until like 2012) and that it's all about quality, but now there's a dip in quality to a franchise and for obvious reasons (developer change) and nobody wants to acknowledge it, and instead say that it's because the franchise is old. It's perplexing. Especially because there's old franchises to this day selling well. Street Fighter, Gran Turismo, GTA, Metal Gear Solid, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Forza, etc.
I bet when Gears releases and doesn't do as well as prior Gears, nobody will flinch to say Black Tusk (or The Coalition. Whatever they're going by) < Epic Games.
