Basically I was playing Halo infinite with a friend, don’t remember what we were talking about but he told me that people in the US love Halo and that is almost as if the game was another sport there (like, americans like it so much) . I’ve been part of the Halo community for a while and I know that people in general like it, but that much? What are your thoughts?
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In the gaming community, maybe, I wouldn’t know. Not in the general population.
Halo is nowhere near that level of popularity and ubiquity. No video game is.
They were exaggerating for emphasis would be my guess.
Or they’re an idiot, I dunno
Sounds like a major exaggeration. I don’t play video games and am only generally aware it’s the name of a video game. I’m sure my parents have never even heard of it.
I mean, I like Halo, but it’s definitely not.
If anything, I think Infinite has been sliding from the public eye.
Not trying to make anyone feel bad about enjoying the game, but no need to overstate its cultural presence.
Never once heard that, I know in the past Starcraft was like this in South Korea but can’t think of any other examples and even that seems like an exaggeration.
I don’t follow the logic. A sport isn’t a sport because it’s popular. There are a handful of sports that aren’t widely popular. Similarly, there are widely popular video games (not Halo after 2010) and they’re not sports
…no, it’s not.
It was a pretty big deal 15-20 years ago but even then it was still limited to other people into the hobby bragging about their personal kill streak or whatever. There’s been a lot of money invested in *trying* to get pro gaming on the same level as pro sports but it hasn’t happened yet.
While it is definitely an exaggeration, there are esports that include Halo. For fans, they might think that it’s just as popular as more traditional sports.
I don’t know about Halo specifically but E-Sports are definitely a thing. Many people in e-sports even wear athletic attire during matches.
Sometimes they are sanctioned by the company, other times its a fan base doing its own thing.
The one I’m most familiar with is Pokemon. Its been a few generations since I got really immersed into the competitive aspect, but there are people who take it seriously and it can be just as complicated as a tactic in football or basketball. And there are jackasses like me who try to abuse paralysis + attract.
Do people still play halo? I’m old, I didn’t even know they were still making halo games lol
Halo has never been less relevant tbh
As someone who counted *Halo* as one of his favorite gaming franchises, I can say that this claim is patently false. Even at the franchise’s height of popularity in the mid to late 2000s, it was nowhere near the popularity of a sport. Yes, *Halo* games were regularly best-sellers, and their releases often came with lots of hype and media coverage, but no, it wasn’t like the average person, outside of gamers, said “Let’s play *Halo*” on a regular basis.
Over the last decade, *Halo* has become significantly less popular, as other games are in the spotlight that *Halo* used to have.
Maybe just all his friends are really into twitch streaming video games.
I’ve read articles that say watching pro gamers is a big thing as measured by number of views that video game tournaments get but I suspect it’s very generational and I wonder if those numbers get inflated by a smallish but devoted fan base. And it’s definitely not a single game like Halo making the money, it’s a market split between all the games that can be played professionally.
Pro video gaming doesn’t have the broad popularity base of the well known sports in the US, but since there seems to be real money in it, it may eventually get there. But only if it gets more organized and solidly marketed.
Halo hasn’t been good since 3.
I know nothing about sports or video games but even I know Halo isn’t as popular as it used to be. There are video game tournaments but it isn’t nearly as popular here as it is in (I believe) Korea.
Esports aren’t sports. Also you’d have much more success with that statement in like 2005-2010. 2022 not so much
I can slightly agree. It’s nowhere near the hype that professional football or basketball get but there’s been a growing number of people watching competitive games.
I used to work for a charity that hosted a very large competitive event every year and we’d get several thousand viewers easy during the Halo matches. There were people wearing team colors, making chants, etc. However overall competitive Halo’s viewerships dropped compared to current games such as Apex or Valorant.
Esports has found it’s foothold but unless something crazy happens to get the hype on a single game like StarCraft did in Korea then I doubt we’d ever see it be as popular as physics sports.
Bahahahaha
It’s just an exaggeration 😂 he just means we play Halo a lot.
I think it’s a full sentence, not a phrase.
It may have been one 15-20 years ago, but not anymore. Your friend is stuck in the past!
No, no video game has quite achieved that prominence, and Halo’s star has fallen much too far for it to be the one that makes it; much more likely it will be something like League of Legends or Fortnite, or some competitive Minecraft thing.
I think I only play halo 1 or 2 only online and with my siblings
That the person is stuck living in 2004
I think it is a sentence
Halo peaked in like 2009. Not to mention esports are just not that big in the US.
While Halo has had a history of having a big esports scene, the franchise and its esports scene have drastically gone down in popularity over the past decade
If you want to see what an actual massive esports scene looks like, I’d say StarCraft and League of Legends are better picks
Call of Duty, while it is the best selling video game franchise and also has an esports scene, it’s not really that massive in comparison to the two games I mentioned
But video games as a whole aren’t popular enough to have a massive following like traditional sports
this mighta been true for a short while around the time Halo 3 came out but not anymore lol
eSports are somehow still a thing but Halo isn’t exactly the first series that comes to mind.
CSGO is ancient and probably still gets more eSports action and twitch viewers than Halo Infinite. Add in Valorant, Call of Duty, Rocket League, Overwatch, etc and you’ll see Halo isn’t that big overall. Not anymore, anyway.
It’s not even a top five esport in the US, and the entire esports scene combined is smaller than the fandom of any major sport.
Hell no. Halo isn’t even as popular as it once was, but even then the only a small segment if the population cared about competitive video games. I bet your friend is in his 30s.
If E-sports were as big as they are now during the period when Halo 2/3 were coming out, you might have been able to say this at a stretch.
Halo is very much not at peak popularity these days and I don’t think there is any game even at the peak of popularity that would be put on the same mainstream level as a sport unless you’re talking about something niche like curling maybe.