But the gameplay is the same. They made content for a small community and thats cool of them, but it doesn't effect most COD players. If 343 spends time on making gameplay better and can't push out content for MLG/commentator's most of us won't lose sleep over it. Those communities already cover those venues, and sure it would be nice, but is it really worth going over to the dark side?
This is a longer post, but it you're interested in spectator mode chat, please read.
The thing that really allowed COD to fully invest in "supporting e-sports" is that they 1) have a massive multiplayer audience, way bigger than Halo currently, and 2) have a massive YouTube gameplay/commentary community.
The people who watch gameplay commentaries are the same people who would interested in watching shout casting.
Spectator Mode, in the way it would be really useful to large tournaments, is a huge undertaking, a lot of internal bandwidth.
The spectator mode features Gears added post launch aren't that big of a deal, but aren't necessarily more useful then screen capturing, granted much cheaper.
But the features COD has added, are a huge step in the right direction, and require a lot more man power.
In order to devote that type of man power, there needs to be that large audience.
In 343 Industries' defense, when Halo 4 features were being planned out, the small, competitive crowd that was (sorta) asking for spectator mode was completely invested in MLG.
Adding a spectator mode like gears, just wouldn't be all that helpful, as MLG has the experience and tools to screen cap.
Now that MLG has dropped Halo, that small spectator mode would really help get these grass roots tournaments started up, but by that time it was just too late in the dev schedule.
So for Halo 4, maybe a small spectator mode can be patched in.
If not, we grew ourselves without it once, we can do it again.
Hopefully the gameplay of halo 4 is super fun to play, enjoyable to watch, and promotes competitive play.
If it does, then competitive Halo will flourish, with or without spectator mode.
I hope the competitive crowd can move past the lack of spectator mode, and concentrate on the gameplay elements, as those are much more important right now.