Halo Infinite is losing players fast – but that’s no problem for a live service game

techradar.com:

Halo Infinite has lost a significant number of active players since it launched to a warm reception last year.

Critics praised the game across the board, while Microsoft called Halo Infinite the “biggest launch in Halo franchise history” and said the game had attracted 20 million total players by January 25. 

However, the game has proved less successful when it comes to retaining those players, with many no longer returning regularly to the shooter.

On PC, Halo Infinite’s player count has fallen dramatically since launch, now peaking at around 30,000 daily concurrent players on Steam (via Business Insider). When the game launched in November, its daily concurrent player count peaked above 250,000 players – so that’s nearly a 90% drop-off.

It's a similar story with the Xbox release. As Forbes reports, Halo Infinite has fallen out of Xbox’s top five most-played games, taking sixth position behind Fortnite, Call of Duty: Warzone, GTA 5, Apex Legends and Roblox.

Although Microsoft hasn’t published any hard numbers about Halo Infinite’s Xbox player count, the game looks to be following the same trend as it has on PC: downwards.

Despite its glowing reception at launch, Halo Infinite hasn’t been without issues. When the multiplayer released in November, players reported a glut of bugs and glitches affecting gameplay, matchmaking, graphics and more. Although plenty of these problems were fixed in good time, and are par for the course with any triple-A multiplayer shooter at launch, some persisted for months.

Only last week did developer 343 Industries successfully release a patch to solve Big Team Battle matchmaking issues, which has prevented players from joining matches in large parties.

Similarly, the game came under fire for its