We will have to disagree about Gears "easily" eclipsing Halo in gameplay (I know a number of people who don't even think GeoW is the best cover game, that honor going to Rainbow Six Vegas in their opinion). As for Halo 2 and Halo 3 not being very good... your opinion aside, most consumers who purchased the game and the overwhelming majority of critical press thing the games are very, very good. Objectively, our opinions aside, you base these sort of things on consumers and consumers are saying the Halo franchise is a really great series of games -- and few shooters are in the same ball park in consumer adoption as well as critical acceptance.
That said, why would Epic work on Halo? They have Gears of War, Unreal, and Unreal Tournament IPs making them cash. Why make MS money and build on the Halo IP when they can work on their own IPs and make Epic the company more valuable. This is the very reason Bioware is working on their own IPs now.
Further, has Epic shown themselves to be excellent in the areas that Halo fans "interpret" Halo to be good. AI, story, etc. Epic makes prettier pixels, but I doubt most Halo fans are giddy with the idea of Epic further developing the Halo story.
Anyhow, you can start naming FPS developers and the slew of insults, complaints, etc will follow.
id
Cryteck
Epic
Valve
Star Breeze
Free Radical
GearBox
Infinity Ward
I could give you a lot of reasons why every one of those excellent FPS developers wouldn't touch the Halo license for IP reasons. And Halo fans could immediately spot areas where these developers fall short in areas that Halo excels in their opinion.
I also highly doubt another developer would be able, in a 3 year period, to churn out a full SP campaign, 4 player + coop, full industry-leading MP experience, map modification tools, video and screen capture tools, all tied into an online stat and media tracking hub.
And Halo consumers will demand more than that in Halo 4.
I'm not suggesting Epic do Halo, of course, I'm simply saying that what Epic will do with the Gears franchise is now more exciting to me than Bungie-Halo. Gears has made a huge mark, and you are going to see shooter after shooter now copy the Cover/Blind Fire model. Uncharted and KZ2 already are, to name a couple notables.
Hell, many of the weaknesses in Halo are exposed by Gears. Halo is dated. Most FPS games dont even have a HUD anymore..Halo still does. It doesn't have the animation, immersiveness, dynamic melee combat, even the enemy AI in Halo is easily worse than it is in Gears. Halo 3 is following the same tired Halo model that has now been surpassed by games like Gears. Overall Gears is a more graphically impressive, more tightly focused experience, and even has a better story at this point.
I understand Halo's sales...well, lets start off by saying I've played little Halo Multi-player..maybe it's a lot better than I know. But I can say the SP is a letdown, and I have to think at least 50% of buyers are not going to bury themselves in the MP..remember Epic stating that a huge percent of unreal tournament owners never went online with the title (it was something like 50% or more). UT is a game that is specifically focused on online, and half it's players never did..
It remains to be seen if Halo's drop in qaulity becomes reflected in the future sales..I think just the fact it remains a every three-four year franchise protects it from a lot..hell I'll buy Halo 4 in 4 years..why not give it another chance by then?
But you didn't really answer my question..I'm not being subjective..Halo 3 is not that good..I say in this case my opinion is objective. I dont accept "well a lot of people like it". I can accept that in some cases, not this one..
I think already, one would have to admit Halo 3 has seen more criticism than one might expect..even the reviews had a fairly lackluster quality to them, as if saying, this game is so highly polished we had to give it a 9.5+..but it lacks spark. And what was another common criticism "this game is nice but we did it all before in previous Halo's"..even the levels are like that.
I would cut Bungie some slack because I feel like Halo 3 was started about four or five years ago, and as such was never truly a ground up next gen game graphically. But, 2 strikes in a row doesnt instill confidence..The funny thing is I lost confidence in Bungie with Halo 2..because before we ever saw Halo 3 I didn't expect it to look that great graphically..
I would predict that based on game quality, hype for Gears franchise begins to grow and Halo hype levels off..and possibly that Halo 3's legs will not be as great as previous Halo's.
