Shortly after its launch, Halo 5: Guardians infamously dropped from the top 10 most played Xbox One games, largely due to its release schedule and general reception (especially surrounding the single player story and lack of multiplayer game modes available).
Almost 3 months later, 343 Industries’ second Halo title has finally climbed back up into the top 10 list.
Using the Xbox Store’s list of Xbox One games – and sorting by ‘Most Popular’ – players can get a rough idea of which games are played the most on the console. Most often, this includes the likes of FIFA, Minecraft, GTA V, and Destiny on a regular basis.
Halo 5: Guardians dropping out of the top 10 list was seen as a sign of the game’s poor reception among fans, and used as a testament to the series allegedly falling out of favour. By looking at how the game is back into the top 10, we can estimate that not only is it stilled played, but it’s also becoming more popular.
It’s not that far of a leap to make when you consider that the Halo 5 X Games tournament just came to an incredible close, totalling at around 40,000 views on Twitch, giving Halo‘s pro scene the kind of exposure the series hasn’t really seen since Halo 3.
It also comes at the beginning of February, when 343 Industries has rumored that it will be adding community-made maps into matchmaking playlists, as well as incorporating new game modes (such as Infection and ball-based games – think Grifball, Assault, Oddball).
As well as the above and matchmaking fixes, 343 will also allegedly add maps made from scratch into the game in this month’s title update.