Halo 2 has released for the Halo: Master Chief Collection roughly seven months after Halo Reach became available to play on Steam, and it’s been far stronger for the collection than Halo was; a surprising result, considering that Halo is the precursor of the entire franchise, and Halo 2 had somewhat of a disappointing end that seemed to cut the apex in half.

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Regardless, the numbers are in and they don’t lie: Halo 2 brought roughly 10,000 more players than the release of Halo did to the Master Chief Collection.

There were a few complaints in regards to Halo: CE Anniversary when it did release on March 3, 2020, almost three months ago.

It’s theorized that Halo: CE Anniversary didn’t take as much work as the other titles within the franchise due to it already being remastered recently, along with being released already on PC.

Yet still, areas that were a bit darker on the original Xbox release back in 2001 felt far brighter in the recent remake, washing out much of the original ambiance and atmosphere that the original held. By and large, however, the gunplay and one versus many gameplay that iconized the Master Chief as a piacular video game hero saving humanity from the brink of extinction.

Halo 2 feels a bit more faithful to the original in terms of akimbo gunplay that the iteration opened up in the franchise that wasn’t seen utilized to a similar level until a few titles later.

Many are theorizing that the biggest increase in players won’t be seen until Halo 3 and ODST drop being that they were the most popular entries into the Halo franchise on console, and ODST alone is popular for Bungie testing the waters with what would eventually become the unique game style of Destiny. Halo 4 is likely to further spike the concurrent player count and has been rumored to release late Holiday 2020 – before the pandemic struck.

The rumored plan would be to finish all of the remasters before Halo: Infinite launched holiday 2020.

Halo 2 has a more than a few performance issues that have been reported, however; from latency to low overall FPS, it’s admittedly far from what many would presume would arrive from 343 Industries. Further, the mandatory Xbox Live service occasionally fails (which has been a thorn in multiple titles), making playing the game itself occasionally more difficult than it needs to be.

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Regardless of the issues, Halo: The Master Chief Collection has earned its long-standing place on Steam’s best-selling list if only on pedigree alone. The coming releases will likely serve to only bolster the concurrent player count, at least until all the planned release just published.