The release of Halo Infinite in November 2021 was huge for both casual and competitive gamers. Accordingly, the title essential re-ignited an esport which had been underwater for a few years. Bearing this in mind, read on as we discuss how the opening year, reviewing Halo Infinite Esports 2022!
Halo Infinite Esports 2022 – Plenty of Events
For context, the last event was the Halo Championship Series Finals 2018 for Halo 5.
After multiple years of downtime, the Halo Championship Series was reborn and reworked for 2022. Naturally, considering how young Halo Infinite was in its release, 343 Industries designed a competitive season with this in mind – access and opportunity.
Specifically, the HCS focused on open format events with multiple qualifiers. In addition, third party events were hosted all year, with great success – such as the FaZe Clan Invitational. This open nature and frequency of events gave teams the opportunity to invest in the esport.
Here’s a look at the essential events which decorated the season’s calendar:
- 2021 – December – Halo Champinoship Kickoff Major (Raleigh)
- 2022 – February-March – HCS 2022 Regionals + Supers (Online)
- April – FaZe Halo Invitational (Online)
- May – HCS Kansas City Major
- July-August – HCS 2022 Regionals + Supers (Offline and Online)
- September – HCS Orlando Major
- October – Halo World Championship 2022
Indeed, we were thrilled to see offline events being held. Accordingly, this contributed to the success. For those uanware, Majors had $350,000 on the line. Moreover, to conclude the season, an impressive $1,000,000 was thrown up for the Halo World Championship 2022.
Esports Viewership – Some Respectable Statistics
Now, this is the part of the discussion where we discuss viewership. As we’ve said in the past, viewership is a great metric to understand how popular an esport is.
Indeed, this early on, a steady viewership is essential – all the statistics to be mentioned are thanks to Esports Charts.
Firstly, every single event this year blew previous Halo events out of the water. For example, 7 events this year surpassed the HCS World Championship 2018 viewership. Sitting at a peak viewership of 90,000, here’s how this season compared to that former halmark event:
- HCS Kickoff Major Raleigh 2021 – Peak Viewers 267,279
- Bud Light Seltzer’s Battle of the Best – Peak Viewers 155,232
- HCS World Championship 2022 – Peak Viewers 143,585
- AT&T Annihilator Cup 2022 – Peak Viewers 121,721
- HCS Anaheim 2022 – Peak Viewers 114,194
- HCS Major Kansas City 2022 – Peak Viewers 104,234
- Major Orlando 2022 HCS – Peak Viewers 88,967
- HCS North America Super 2022 – Peak Viewers 77,494
Notably, the first event of the season racked in the most viewership – which is expected due to how long ago Halo esports was ever watched. This excitement carried on, to a lesser extent, to the rest of the season.
Combining a live crowd, the high-quality broadcast seemed to attract both old Halo competitive fans together with new eyes.
In short, while there’s room for improvement next year, considering the nature of an opening year and previous Halo events – viewership was great.
Halo Infinite Esports 2023 – Hopes for Next Year
Moving on, we have a short wishlist for Halo Infinite Esports should they want to expand and improve:
- More regular game updates – a year old, the community is already beginning to complain of a lack of updated. Indeed, 343 Industries needs to keep up with the growth.
- International approach – an HCS Major in a non-North American venue would be incredible to see how other regions react to the esport
- Minimize controversy – the change in prize pool to the World Championship left a sour taste in the mouths of Halo esports players – either stick to crowd-funding or abandon it completely
- More regular third party events – they were a great success last year
Overall, we can’t wait to see more from 343 Industries in the coming year.
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