[...] People always make a big deal of how "Halo simply MUST change now that the gaming landscape has changed" - the argument is that with the rise of games like the Call of Duty franchise and the explosion in popularity then Halo MUST go down that path to compete. And I am sick and tired of this line of reasoning.
The last time that Halo was king of the hill
was when the were
decisively different than all other first person shooters on the market. It's possible that the gaming market has changed, for better or worse, but it's also possible that Halo has lost all of this market share, and longevity, simply because it changed the Halo formula to become
more like the other games.
If we look at the history of Xbox Live and the first person shooter multiplayer genre in general the simplest explanation is that Halo changed - it is much more complex to think that millions upon millions of players simultaneously decided that they wanted unlocking perks, weapons, attachments, kill streaks, etc., and that's why they moved away from the Halo franchise. And when you follow this convoluted and erroneous line of reasoning you end up with Halo 4. A game that at the core does actually "feel like Halo," but has so many poor gameplay decisions layered on top of it that you can't ever get down to that "feel" unless you arrange some custom games and/or play with modded/hacked game files. [...]
