How do you think both the OG Xbox (and the brand overall) would have fared if Halo hadn't been there? (Let's say it got cancelled or just never existed at all)

I cannot begin to tell you how nonexistent Xbox would be. Probably would’ve been the first, and the only Xbox.

We’re talking about a console that sold over 130 million fewer consoles than the leading competition, and it had the game that was the biggest entertainment launch in history at the time.

That’s how huge Halo was, and that was just on the OG Xbox.

BioWare, Sega, Bethesda, Rare, etc, were great side pieces to go along with Halo on the OG Xbox, but they would not have carried the console.

Apple Pippin and Microsoft Xbox would be in the same sentence every time it was mentioned.

Xbox would be remembered by nerds as a console that was ahead of its time, but the brand would die before 2010.

They still have Blinx they would be fine.

I feel the topic is like stomping somebody who is already down- unnecessary, excessive brutality.

Poorly. http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2002/01/49600">At least half of all OXboxes sold early in its life had a copy of Halo CE attached to them. It was a bona fide system-seller, and was the biggest game by far on the system until Halo 2 was released. Without Halo, the Xbox would likely have languished without some truly major killer-app of Halo's level, and the system would have been yet another mostly-forgotten one-off also-ran console like so many others.

If we assume that everything was the same minus Halo, then Xbox would die after 3-4 years max and that is about it.
Halo was the only reason why Xbox put some fighting against PS2 during early 2000s.

When me and my little brother were in high school we got our Xbox with Blinx cos games with guns and realistic violence weren't allowed in our household; not a bad little game, though largely forgotten today, felt kinda like a lost Dreamcast game.

Only one console is released. It probably outsells Dreamcast, but not GameCube.
Halo was essential.