Microsoft announced today that Halo Infinite is the biggest launch in the history of the franchise. But there are two caveats.

“With over 20 million Spartans joining us so far, we’re thrilled to announce that Halo Infinite is the biggest launch in Halo franchise history!” the official Halo account tweeted today. “Thank you, everyone, for joining us on the next step in this great journey.”

And, sure. Technically, Halo Infinite is the biggest launch in franchise history. But I want to point out two important caveats:

First, Halo Infinite multiplayer is free, and that number includes those players. So many of the people playing this game aren’t even paying for it.

Second, and less problematic, Halo Infinite is the first Halo title to ship simultaneously on more than just a single console version. This title is available across Xbox One and Series X|S, PC, Xbox Game Pass, and Xbox Cloud Gaming, the latter of which includes PC, Xbox consoles, the web, Android, iPhone, and iPad. That’s great, but this massive availability clearly had an impact on the numbers too.

To be clear, I’m not complaining. But it was virtually assured that Halo Infinite would be the biggest Halo ever. Microsoft made sure of that with a smart launch strategy.

Tagged with Halo, Halo Infinite