I don't necessarily agree with everything said here, though I do recognize that the population has been down versus Halo 3. That being said, there were much fewer games to compete with back when Halo 3 came out.
I would also say that I think the game is good. It has problems, and I'm not trying to hide it. But also, I can tell you that the intent of people working in games, not just Halo 4 but every game, their intent isn't "let's make a mediocre game". I'm not saying that Halo 4 is mediocre, but sometimes it seems like people honestly think that the people who work on games purposely put bugs in the game, or whatever. It's pretty ridiculous.