With the confirmed price and release date of the Xbox Series X and Series S, Xbox fans can now shift their attention to what games they want to buy alongside the console. Xbox has a fair share of exclusives their known for, such as Gears of War and Forza, but their best known gaming franchise has to be Halo. Since the first Xbox in the early 2000s, Halo has been the game people think of when they think Xbox. Halo Infinite, the next installment of the series, was supposed to release alongside the Series X and S as a launch exclusive, driving in old and new fans to the franchise, as well as Xbox.

But it got delayed.

With a projected release sometime in early 2021, it’s a huge blow to the lineup of games for Xbox at launch. Sure, there are plenty of other options, but Halo was THE option. So, how badly will the delay of Halo Infinite hurt the sales of Xbox?

It’s important to know why Halo Infinite got delayed. A few months ago, Microsoft revealed a few game announcements for the Xbox Series X, including the first-look at Halo Infinite’s gameplay. Well…it didn’t go well with many fans, claiming that the game didn’t look great graphically, at least when compared to what Microsoft promises Series X games can look like.

With Halo Infinite delayed, the next biggest exclusives for Series X at launch will be Fable, Hellblade 2, Flight Simulator, and a few smaller indie games. With Halo out of the spotlight, there might actually be a better chance of these games getting bigger sales numbers overall, though it’s likely Halo’s sales would have been the largest of the bunch. It’s received plenty of hype from the developers and a passionate fanbase. There’s no doubt that the lack of Halo at launch will probably cancel a few thousand pre-orders.

That said, Xbox does have one thing up its sleeve that Sony’s PlayStation 5 doesn’t: Xbox Game Pass. It’s a subscription service that lets you download and play from a wide category of games available on Xbox. Combine this, along with the fact that Series X will support all games that were on the Xbox One and 360, and the amount of playable games on Series X at launch will be massive.

Overall, Halo’s delay does hurt the Xbox Series X and S a bit. For those who play on Xbox just for Halo, there’s little reason to get a Series X now. However, fans of Xbox in general will still have the games they’re playing now be playable on Series X, as well as a handful of big name exclusives to try out in Halo’s place. It’s unfortunate to see Halo Infinite get delayed, but Shigeru Miyamoto, a developer at Nintendo, once said this:

“A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.”