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Halo 5 Had More Active Players Than Halo 3 Even Before Free Promo

"As you can imagine, this is pretty darn exciting to see."

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Nine months after release, Halo 5: Guardians continues to grow its playerbase and topple franchise records.

343 Industries community manager "Brav" wrote on Reddit (via NeoGAF), that the Xbox One shooter had the highest number of monthly active players for a Halo game since 2007's Halo 3. More impressive, this was achieved before Halo 5's week-long promotion where it was free.

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Speaking about the number of Halo 5 players who joined during the free period (June 29-July 6), Brav didn't share a specific number, but said "you'd be pleasantly surprised."

Another standout statistic is that Halo 5's playerbase has actually grown in recent months. For example, June's player figures are higher than May's.

"As you can imagine, this is pretty darn exciting to see," he said.

Brav did not share any specific numbers about anything because he said he'd "have to get approval from the powers that be." But things are going well, it seems. "You should rest assured that together, we're quite a strong army," he said.

One element that might have contributed to Halo 5's enduring success is 343's free DLC campaign. Instead of selling extra maps, as it did with Halo 4 and Halo 3, the developer gave away all extra content. 343 released eight free expansions, the most recent of which was June's Warzone Firefight, which is believed to be the game's final free add-on.

Last year, Microsoft said it was starting to plan Halo 6, though the game has not yet been officially announced. The next major Halo game is 2017's Halo Wars 2.

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