With a team their size I doubt things are going bad.
Size of team does not guarantee smoothness of development process nor does it guarantee quality of title.
When communities reach the point of questioning whether their game is dying I usually just ignore the issue until the fear passes, but with Halo there are clear indicators that it is no longer the lead FPS on a console in terms of both popularity and polish.
There are also clear indicators that it is not the second, third, or fourth FPS on a console. It doesn't need to be popular to be fun but it does need to be good. Right now it is neither as popular nor as good as it has been in the past. And that worries me.
At certain times of the day, in the Reach playlists that I enjoy, it is hard for me to get games with consistently good hosts.
For months this game has been plagued by quitters. The best deterrent for quitting is making a game that is fun and NOT frustrating.
I can overlook a low map count. I can overlook some bugs. I can overlook minor annoyances caused by bloom and AA's. I can overlook frame rate issues. I can overlook slow playlist updates. I can't overlook half of my games having crappy hosts or quitters.
Popularity and quality are not always connected but based on my recent experiences with Reach, they are.
Save us Frankie.
EDIT:
Was frantically writing that wild-eyed manifesto while Ellis was busy actually putting some of my fears to rest. Thanks Ellis. And thanks for wishing Jeff Green well the other day. That was a classy move.