The population is fantastic? Maybe if this wasn't a Halo title. The population is downright pathetic for being Microsofts killer app. An unannounced one that got scrapped.

This is a Halo game made by a new company, and it's still one of the highest played Xbox Live games. That is extremely well especially considering the Reach abomination.

You're comparing it to that "Reach abomination"? Reach had a better population throughout it's lifetime than Halo 4. If that doesn't tell [i]you[/i] something I don't know what will. It's not one of the highest played Xbox Live games. Halo 2 and Halo 3 held top spots for extended periods of time. I'm pretty sure Halo 2 never left the top spot on OG XBL. Halo 3 was 1 until MW1 started to take over and H3 still sat at number 2. Halo 4 never even hit 500k players at once. Instantly dropping from 411k to 100k and shortly after hovered around 60/50k. Now we're sitting at around 20k daily peak. That's not bad, for a new IP. It's horrible for an established IP.

I think it is hard to draw comparisons there though. Halo 2 was pretty much the game on the OG Xbox in terms of competitive play. Halo 3 as you said was huge but it did split time with MW1 and as the gen progressed more and more competition emerged fracturing the user base even further. Is Halo 4s player count great? No but your also talking about a game that has more competition than any of its predecessors did and it's still holding a solid count.