Halo Infinite’s Steam player base might have taken a nosedive according to reports that emerged over the weekend, but those figures don’t tell the full story — our own Xbox data suggests the game is still going strong two months after its full release.For our regular Gameplay Chart, we track around 2.5 million active Xbox accounts to find out which are the most-played games of each week. Sure, it’s far from the full Xbox player base, but it’s still comfortably a large enough sample size to get an accurate cross-section of what people have been playing. Contrary to those plummeting Steam numbers — the game has dropped from a concurrent peak of over 260,000 to below 10,000 players at the time of writing — our data from the last week actually shows a very slight increase in Halo Infinite’s Xbox player base, with more than 10% of all tracked Xbox accounts having played Infinite in the last seven days. You have to assume that the vast majority of that early influx in Steam players was purely due to the game’s multiplayer being free, as we wouldn’t expect Steam to be the platform of choice for many Halo fans to drop 50 quid on the game, especially with it being included in both Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass. Granted, Infinite’s player percentage has dropped off substantially since late last year, with around 25% of tracked players firing up the game in the week its free-to-play multiplayer launched in beta and an extremely impressive 30% of tracked players getting involved in Infinite’s full launch week. But no game can expect to retain around a quarter of all Xbox users playing every week for long, and this is to be expected, with many key features still yet to arrive in the shooter and multiplayer offering a pretty bare-bones suite with a progression system that has put a good few noses out of joint. In fact, if we compare the current Halo numbers to similar titles and other big recent launches, having more than 10% of Xbox players on the game this long after launch is a feat not a single other game we checked can boast. Forza Horizon 5 dropped to around 8% in the same timeframe (and even that is really solid), Call of Duty Vanguard never once even made it as high as that and hovered around the 5% mark two months in, while big Game Pass additions like Back 4 Blood and Outriders enjoyed explosive launches (17.5% and 12% respectively in their first full week) but quickly fell to around 4% within a month of release, both dropping further to around 1.5% by the end of their second month.Halo Infinite has been dominant in our Gameplay Chart ever since the multiplayer component launched in beta back in November, debuting in first place and only being bumped down to second a fortnight ago… by Fortnite. Our data has Infinite still way clear of third-place title CoD: Modern Warfare too, with around 30% more tracked players than Activision’s shooter — even if Halo were losing its player base, that’s a huge buffer before something else replaces it as the second most-played game on Xbox. Heck, if the numbers continue to hold steady and the buzz around Fortnite’s new Chapter 3 dies down a little, it could even be back on top in the next few weeks. Seeing the likes of Fortnite ride up and down the chart as new content drops also shows why Halo would likely bounce back even if its player count was waning, as Infinite’s multiplayer uses a similar games-as-a-service model to many of those games we see get big boosts time and again. The issue here, though, is that the first major content drop for Infinite is still some three months out, and that’s a long time for a competitive shooter to retain players with just ten maps. Still, wherever Infinite finds itself on the chart come May, you can guarantee that the eventual arrival of campaign co-op and new multiplayer stuff in Season 2 will propel it back towards — and perhaps even into — the top spot.That Business Insider article also points to Twitch numbers to suggest interest in Infinite could be on the decline, but the simple truth there is that Halo has never been a particularly big deal on the streaming platform in the first place. The relatively slow, methodical gameplay is a far cry from the madness of the most popular games on Twitch — whether that’s the controlled chaos of MOBAs like League of Legends and DOTA 2 or the fast-paced battle royale mayhem of Fortnite and Apex Legends — and it has neither the pace nor the pizzazz to hold the attention of the younger viewers who make up such a large portion of Twitch’s audience. Halo Infinite has just shy of 600,000 followers on the streaming site, absolutely dwarfed by ever-popular games like Minecraft (43 million), GTA 5 (52.5 million), and Fortnite (81 million)… even The Master Chief Collection has only managed to pick up 1.5 million followers in almost a decade, with Halo 5 sat at 1.3 million, to give an idea of the comparative lack of love for the franchise on Twitch.With the first big content drop still three months away, we have little doubt that Infinite’s numbers will fall off somewhat as players wrap up the campaign and start to tire of the multiplayer component’s minimal map selection, slow progression, and ongoing issues. Right now, though, our data paints a picture of a game in rude health and one with more staying power than any of its recent or relevant peers, and each and every major update will inevitably bring back many lapsed players to give the user base another much-needed boost. Infinite shows absolutely no signs of relinquishing its spot as one of the most-played games on Xbox any time soon, although we’ll have to wait and see whether upcoming big releases like Elden Ring might have anything to say about that.Still enjoying Halo Infinite? Given up on the Battle Pass grind yet? Waiting for that first big update to jump in? Let us know below!
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