Surely you are aware that Halo 3 with variants and COD:MW with variants are the most successful online FPSes of all time? Both were also criticized for shallow single player stories, not on par with previous versions.
Well, to be fair, COD is an RPG. If you have to farm and craft for 20 hours to get a decent weapon, you're not playing an FPS. Halo on the other hand is a different story :D
I wonder how you define successful. Microsoft doesn't seem to like releasing simultaneous player counts except on launch days and of course launch is almost always the highest count you'll find, but the Halo 3 launch day count (750k) I found isn't that impressive compared to run of the mill counter-strike numbers on steam (75k). Mind you, counter-strike at this point is 12 years old. I'm pretty sure that no one will be playing either of those games in 12 years.
