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Halo Infinite has been a resounding success, with the triple-A title, and latest entry in the famous Xbox series, releasing to both critical acclaim and commercial appeal. Microsoft has seen more than 20 million players filling up Master Chief's out-sized boots, while something as totemic as Halo no doubt helps the software giant flog Game Pass sales across Xbox and PC.
However, there's one platform where Halo Infinite hasn't been doing so well. According to Forbes, viewership for Halo Infinite peaked just a little over a week after launch before proceeding to drop off rapidly. At the time of writing, TheGamer found that Halo Infinite is the 45th most-watched game on Twitch for January 2022, sitting below Red Dead Redemption 2, and above Smite, with 5,609,458 viewer hours.
This is pretty poor considering Rockstar's cowboy simulator is over a few years old at this point, and enjoys nowhere near the online success of its GTA 5 stablemate, while Smite is hardly the biggest MOBA around. For a game so hyped, it might be expected that Halo Infinite would be higher than forty-five. Just FYI, the top five most-watched games on Twitch for this month, in order, were League of Legends (162m viewer hours), GTA5 (140m), Escape from Tarkov (107m), Valorant (70m), and Rust (61m).
Forbes writer Paul Tassi speculated on the reasons why Halo Infinite might be faring so poorly on the streaming platform. "I think it's a combination of things ... traditional shooters are falling flat in the face of more trendy competition, a mix of battle royales, survival games and CSGO-like elimination offerings," he wrote.
"This is why we’ve seen games like Fortnite, Valorant, Apex Legends, Tarkov, Warzone and CSGO itself planted so high and essentially never having left those top spots. The other gaps are filled by GTA V roleplay, new debuts like Arceus and old MOBA staples, League of Legends and DOTA 2. No one really cares to watch traditional, team-based shooters that much anymore. For all the problems going on with say, Overwatch, even that’s regularly outperforming Halo."
Meanwhile, it's been well known that Halo Infinite's crossplay has suffered from cheaters, to the extent that it was rendering the multiplayer "unplayable". 343 addressed the cheating, stating that it would release "consistent improvements to our game's systems and taking action on bad actors", while acknowledging that cheating would likely "never go away entirely".
Still, the relatively low Twitch viewership might not be too much of a concern considering the very healthy player base for Halo Infinite, while Microsoft will be wanting viewers for its upcoming Halo TV series, which has just announced its premiere date.