Halo is a franchise in delcline?!? You do realize that Halo 4 was the fastest selling Halo game right? That game has also most likely crossed 9 million sales by now in just over a year. No PS exclusive can sell that much that fast. 

From what I understand the Halo 4 multiplayer scene is largely dead and has been for some time. That seems to be what a number of people have said. People buy it but not nearly as many people play it actively online. I'm not sure how true that is but I've heard it said by both people I know and internet personalities.

Also, Halo 4 may have sold that many copies but one wonders if that's not simply because the 360 lacked any other worthwhile exclusives at that time and since. No doubt it was a great game and worthy of selling well but you have 80 million 360's sitting out there and having no other new exclusive titles to really sink money into other than a franchise that was already extremely popular. It was bound to sell but how much of that was on its own merit?

I don't think I really need to point this out but there was nowhere near the hysteria surrounding Halo 4 as there was around Halo 2 or Halo 3. You may not notice it in the sales right now but the franchise is starting to get that collective "meh" feeling from the gaming community. The same feeling that started to take hold surrounding Call of Duty since Modern Warfare 3.

There goes my chance of seeing GoW1 steamworks after GFWL dies. :(

You are right about there being a significant population decline, but that doesn't mean people don't enjoy Halo. Here is the Halo 4 population chart:  http://halocharts.com/2013/playlists_halo4.php

Now you'd be surprised to know that Halo 3 and Reach have similar numbers of online players. So it seems as if Halo 4's online players have shifted back to playing 3 and reach. The reason there was a huge decline was because Halo gamers were dissappointed with 343's changes to the multiplayer. Plus the online had loads of problems for months like lots of lag and long waiting times to find games. 

As for its decline, I have no reason to believe the series is on decline so far. Perhaps with more and more releases there will be, but so far the sales don't suggest a declining trend. They also haven't shown any significant growth either though. All of the releases have sold similar amounts. 

Prediction, MS will pay Respawn a ridiculous amount of money and Titanfall 2 will also be a MS exclusive.

First it was Bungie (Halo) on Xbox, then EPIC (Gears of War) on X360 and now Respawn (Titanfall) for XB1.

Yep. Fastest selling =/= highest selling. And we're only talking USA here. Looking at comulative sales Halo 4 is looking to repeat Halo:Reach sales track: started out selling faster than Halo 3, but by 100 weeks Reach was tracking behind Halo 3. With Halo 4 it started out tracking much higher than Reach, but now it's cumulative is very close to Reach with the same amount of time on the market. Halo 4 will not achieve the sales of Halo 3 in the USA, with double the US install base.

Also consider my other point that Halo didn't grow very much since Halo 2. So 90% of the US's Halo market is within the 15.7 million people who bought the original Xbox. Halo 5 is important for Xb one to keep these people on board, but that's just a stop loss strategy not a growth strategy.

They won't even win NA

Knee jerk thread.

Gears has always been exclusive... It's an important game for sure. If they make great Gears of War that would probably convince me to buy a XB1.

I bow down every nite to microsoft

Nope. Try again next month.