Interest in “Halo Infinite” rises above “Call Of Duty Vanguard” and “Battlefield 2042”

Halo Infinite may only arrive on Xbox and PC, but that hasn’t stopped interest in the game from overtaking holiday season rivals like Call of Duty Vanguard and Battlefield 2042, if you’ve been following the research data.

The graph above shows how successful the Halo Infinite test flights were to generate, although the Halo release date is later (December 8) than that of Call of Duty (November 5) and Battlefield ( November 19).

You may see huge spikes in interest during these test flight weekends, but even outside of that, while an Xbox / PC exclusive, interest in Halo Infinite has generally been strong this entire time, and it only seems to increase over time.

Battlefield 2042 is set to have Early Access tomorrow, October 6, with a test open a few days after, so I would expect to see a spike. But Call of Duty Vanguard? Something seems a bit … offbeat with Sledgehammer’s WWII-based game this season. Interest has lagged behind, and the game already had beta periods in September where you can see small jumps, but nothing quite close to what Halo got. And keep in mind that Vanguard is coming out in a month and interest is waning now under Halo and Battlefield.

The old adage is that Call of Duty is the best-selling game of the year, every year no matter what, but if Vanguard underperforms, it would be the last thing Activision Blizzard wants to see, which has a (understandably) terrible year amid a wide range of investigations into misconduct, harassment and discrimination in the way women were treated in the company.

I doubt that a “moral choice” not to buy an Activision game like Call of Duty this year will significantly reduce sales. But that could be bad timing with Vanguard really fair… not being that appealing, at least compared to other more famous Call of Duty sub-series like Black Ops and Modern Warfare. Of course, Call of Duty now has the Warzone Money Printing Machine running at all times, but there seems to be a glaring lack of buzz around Vanguard compared to previous titles.

Halo, of course, has an advantage because unlike Call of Duty, there is no Halo game every year. Halo Infinite is actually the first new Halo game since Halo 5 in 2015, making it more of an “event”. It also helps that after last year’s disastrous debut, the Year’s Delay appears to have produced a much more polished Halo Infinite, and one that everyone can’t help but rave about during technical testing.

We’ll see how it all plays out at the end. Call of Duty can never be counted and has over 130 million PS4s and PS5s it can sell on, while there is probably half as much Xbox at best for Halo. But still, what I’m seeing here seems important, and an underperforming Call of Duty would be a disaster for Activision, especially this year.

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