‘Halo 5’ Player Count Increasing Monthly, Highest Since ‘Halo 3’
Halo 5: Guardians on the Xbox One has managed to turn around the franchise’s fortunes following the disappointing Halo 4. A 343 Industries community manager revealed early Friday the first-person shooter has seen an increasing number of active players since it was released last October.
The active player population for Halo 4 quickly plummeted soon after release as fans were disenchanted by the Xbox 360 exclusive’s multiplayer and campaign. Developer 343 Industries elected to make several course corrections with Halo 5 for the Xbox One, and it appears to have paid off.
Community Manager Andy “Bravo” Dudynsky couldn’t share exact numbers for Halo 5, but he did share some welcome trends for the game in a Reddit post about the recent Free Play Days promotion. The franchise veteran revealed the game’s player population continues to increase on a monthly basis, and it has the highest number of players since Halo 3.
“I do believe you’d be very pleasantly surprised with not only the number of players who jumped on during the free play period (holy moly lots! by golly it worked!), but also the amount of Halo 5 players each day and month – this isn’t something we’ve talked about yet, but I am rather happy to share that even before the free play period, Halo 5 has had the highest monthly active players for a Halo title since Halo 3.
“Also exciting (and not yet discussed, either) is the increase that H5 has seen in players each month over the past few months (we just got done looking at June numbers, which are once again higher than the previous month). As you can imagine this is pretty darn exciting to see, and this thread seemed like an appropriate place to share this news for the first time.
“I’d have to get approval from the powers that be to say more in terms of specifics, but you should rest assured that together, we’re quite a strong army.”
Halo 3 was the pinnacle of active players with a large Xbox 360 console base to pull from at release and the anticipation to “finish the fight.” Halo Reach later topped the number of concurrent players, as reported by GameRant, but that is not the same statistic as monthly active players.
The decision to make the all of Halo 5’s DLC releases free has obviously paid off for the longevity of the game. Previous entries in the franchise featured paid DLC and Season Passes, which ultimately fragmented the player base. As previously covered by the Inquisitr, 343 Industries specifically wanted to avoid that with the latest entry in the franchise.
The free DLC releases culminated with the launch of Warzone Firefight last week. The return of the Horde-like co-op mode was immediately welcome, though the Halo 5 community naturally has suggestions posted in a Reddit feedback thread on improvements. Some of the bigger issues appear to be the difficulty of some of the boss fights, which require players to burn through the REQ cards at far too fast a rate.
The amount of DLC released so far for Halo 5 has been impressive and has resulted in the return of favorite modes such as Grifball, Infection, and Firefight. There have been eight releases in total, but it is unknown if 343 Industries plans to add more in the coming months. Patch support has been confirmed, but new content has not.
Boost and shoot at the same time with the new Temple variants of Covenant vehicles! Yes, they all come in gold. pic.twitter.com/qc3e2L5snP
— Halo (@Halo) July 1, 2016
The success of REQ Packs and a growing player base do make it seem it would be beneficial for 343 Industries to continue to add new content. However, new content will undoubtedly be coming via Forge which will receive more in-game support plus an expansion to Windows 10 PCs this year.
What do you think of the growing Halo 5 population for Xbox One? Sound off in the comments below.
[Image via 343 Industries]
