Most of the Halo veterans started playing Halo in Halo 1 or Halo 2. These were exciting times in gaming, as Halo 1 was an evolutionary game and Halo 2 brought the best online shooter to Xbox. I started playing Halo 1 when I was like 11 years old and most of the people I play with are my age or a few years older. The reason I love halo so much was because I was shown it at a young age and back then Halo was on top.
Today's 11 year old is probably not going want to say to his parents, "I WANT HALO I WANT HALO" and that's the sad truth to it. Halo isn't even as close to as popular as it was back then, and COD is dominating. Thus this is resulting in a less loyal fan base.
I am a regular poster on this forum and follow closely other forums. I want more than anything for Halo to return to its glory days. Unfortunately, I am not in middle school/high school anymore and I don't have the time to play now that I used to. See the pattern here? All the loyal fans that I grew up with on Xbox also do not have the time to get on and there aren't enough new loyal fans because of the quality of Halo 4. I don't really know how this can get fixed. Halo is in a very bad spot.