It had the same expectations, and a lot more negative press from pretty much every single Halo youtuber for "straying too far from Halo".

It had similar numbers for the first several competitions as well, it was in the top3 for viewership for the first HCS finals.

I'm surprised viewership and playerbase were as good as it was, because the constant stream of negativity, especially from places like waypoint, reddit, youtube, and Team Beyond was craaaaazy. Infinite hasn't even had a fraction of what Halo 5 went through in the first few months of release. I remember someone posting a video of Lethul saying Halo 5 isn't a bad game and r/halo going absolutely nuts over it, like he said Hitler wasn't that bad a guy or something.

Halo 5 was an Xbox exclusive and full price game. Infinite is F2P and on Steam, so naturally has more people interested in it.