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Insomniac leak indirectly revealed sales of Xbox first-party games on PC

//DEVIL//

Member
i dunno what this keeps going. sales dont matter and MS dosen't care either. MS is all about providing the best value to us the gamers, with content that surprises and delights.

where is the metric for happiness and fun? thats all that matters.
Futurama Squinting GIF
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
Assuming these numbers are true,
  • Some are incredible (Sea of Thieves)
  • Some are decent (Grounded, Ori)
  • Some are downright terrible (Forza, Redfall, MSFS, Gears 5, Psy 2, etc.)
My biggest takeaway from here is that it is the more recent games that have performed poorly. And that's a big worry, if true.

All of the following games are from the last 4-5 years, and they do not have good sales numbers:
  • Gears 5 (682K)
  • Forza Motorsport (155K)
  • Hi-Fi Rush (668K)
  • Minecraft Dungeons (288K)
  • Minecraft Legends (72K)
  • As Dusk Falls (70K)
  • Psychonauts 2 (310K)
  • Pentiment (147K)
These 8 games have sold less than 2.4 million copies combined.
 

xrnzaaas

Member
Disappointing but not all that surprising. Pentiment is pretty niche and Gears appeals more to an action crowd than strategy crowd. I reckon the next Gears will do better… been a bit of a break now and people will be keen to give the IP another go.
Yeah I feel like many games involving tactical turn-based combat fail commercially, it's like people love XCOM, but aren't very interested in playing other games with similar gameplay.

Gears Tactics was really fun despite the lack of content and reusing the same maps or objectives in both main and side missions. There's definitely room for a bigger, better and more badass sequel.
 
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What version of Windows are you running? I’ve had very few issues with the PC app for the past year or so and I’ve got like 16 installed games on there right now, no problems.

Windows 11 Pro 23H2.

Fresh install from a newly built PC purchased from PCSpecialist in December 2022. No issues with the hardware or software otherwise and I play a LOT of games across Steam, EA, Ubisoft and Battle.net. It's just the Xbox app that causes me issues. Games will install fine but then a random update will break the game. Doesn't happen for every game but it happens enough to be an annoyance that other games launchers do not have. GamePass games are installed to different SSDs (NVMe & SATA) but these are the same drives that Steam etc use so the problem isn't with the drives.

I suspect it's Microsoft's intrusive encryption algorithms that are the issue. What makes this worse is that the Microsoft Store and Xbox app still have no proper way of verifying files. You can verify them but it takes literally seconds versus the longer verification process you have on Steam and Ubiconnect etc, and it rarely fixes anything. Unlike other game launchers, Microsoft games are installed to drives that are given a unique ID that is stored in the registry, so you cannot just install the drive with the games preinstalled in a new PC and then expect the Xbox app or Microsoft Store to find and verify them like with Steam and Ubiconnect. You have to reinstall them and that in itself can be a problem if you are trying to install the game to the same drive as the original as it then throws up an error. And you cannot uninstall the original game because the registry entries no longer exist for it. And finding and deleting the original files is also not easy as they are often installed to hidden folders not accessible by normal users. You do not get these issues with Steam or any other games launchers because they just install to standard folders with all the normal user permissions etc.

I found all this out when I migrated my SSDs with games preinstalled from my old to my new PC. All the games were detected and added to the various libraries for Steam etc except for those by Microsoft. This and the broken updates are the reasons I do not like the Microsoft Store for games and why I try to avoid it using for anything except smaller indie games.
 
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Chukhopops

Member
Assuming these numbers are true,
  • Some are incredible (Sea of Thieves)
  • Some are decent (Grounded, Ori)
  • Some are downright terrible (Forza, Redfall, MSFS, Gears 5, Psy 2, etc.)
My biggest takeaway from here is that it is the more recent games that have performed poorly. And that's a big worry, if true.

All of the following games are from the last 4-5 years, and they do not have good sales numbers:
  • Gears 5 (682K)
  • Forza Motorsport (155K)
  • Hi-Fi Rush (668K)
  • Minecraft Dungeons (288K)
  • Minecraft Legends (72K)
  • As Dusk Falls (70K)
  • Psychonauts 2 (310K)
  • Pentiment (147K)
These 8 games have sold less than 2.4 million copies combined.
There's too much flawed logic here to address all of it but Psychonauts 2 at 310K on Steam is far from « not good sales numbers » considering the game was a crowdfunding campaign with 4.4M budget and was only picked up by MS late into development. Also the crowdfunding campaign paid out returns to its investors indicating the game brought in more than it cost to produce. Double Fine is a small dev with almost indie levels budget, the sales target wasn't in the millions.

Hi-fi Rush at 668K after less than a year is comparable to Prey (704K on Steam after one year), better than The New Colossus (549K) and waaay better than The Evil Within 2 (227K on Steam over 8 months or so) so it seems standard performance for Bethesda studios.
 

Mephisto40

Member
Your opinion. Also people
Have to buy a game to see if it is any good for themself.

Kinda funny how everybody believes leak till it posts a positive spin on the other company.
Or just sub to gamepass for a month, play the game until you can't be bothered any more, and then cancel the sub before it renews
 

DForce

NaughtyDog Defense Force
If the game sold 4+ million copies on steam then it would be harder on the NPD/GSD charts.
 

Havoc2049

Member
It's done well on PC, but let's not go too far here. That's a little over 9 million after 6, going on 7 years, and with multiple rounds at notable sales discounts to boot. I'd say its sales numbers should be expected on the average end given the amount of time it's been out.

Given the game's not a major seller on Xbox consoles, total sales are probably a bit over 10 million with that platform included.
Sea of Thieves is still in its 5th year and launched in 2018. SoT will hit 6 years in March and it has only been on Steam since 2020.

SoT also had strong retail and digital sales when it launched. Game Pass was still new when SoT released, so Game Pass didn't effect sales that much. SoT was #1 in the UK and #2 in the US on the March 2018 sales charts. Rare also reported SoT launch sales numbers of 2 million, probably the last time MS reported sales numbers on a game, before they went full on MS company line of subscription and engagement numbers, like they do with all their other products. It has been reported several times recently that SoT has sold around 15 million copies.

Launch press release from March 2018:
 
There’s our Steam Starfield numbers.

KpdZrar.jpg

Guess G Godot25 's estimates were likely correct after all. They said 4 million for Starfield, right? Well, take the revenue there and divide by the average launch MSRP ($60) and you get ~ 3.9 million.

Although it's likely a bit lower than that, since a good number also bought the higher-priced editions. But has the game gone on sale on Steam? I think it definitely has, so that would balance things out the other way. Basically units sold range for Starfield on Steam could be anywhere between 3.8 million - 4.2 million. I think that seems fair.

Sea of Thieves is still in its 5th year and launched in 2018. SoT will hit 6 years in March and it has only been on Steam since 2020.

SoT also had strong retail and digital sales when it launched. Game Pass was still new when SoT released, so Game Pass didn't effect sales that much. SoT was #1 in the UK and #2 in the US on the March 2018 sales charts. Rare also reported SoT launch sales numbers of 2 million, probably the last time MS reported sales numbers on a game, before they went full on MS company line of subscription and engagement numbers, like they do with all their other products. It has been reported several times recently that SoT has sold around 15 million copies.

Launch press release from March 2018:

Who's reported that it sold 15 million copies and what source(s) were they using?

Assuming these numbers are true,
  • Some are incredible (Sea of Thieves)
  • Some are decent (Grounded, Ori)
  • Some are downright terrible (Forza, Redfall, MSFS, Gears 5, Psy 2, etc.)
My biggest takeaway from here is that it is the more recent games that have performed poorly. And that's a big worry, if true.

All of the following games are from the last 4-5 years, and they do not have good sales numbers:
  • Gears 5 (682K)
  • Forza Motorsport (155K)
  • Hi-Fi Rush (668K)
  • Minecraft Dungeons (288K)
  • Minecraft Legends (72K)
  • As Dusk Falls (70K)
  • Psychonauts 2 (310K)
  • Pentiment (147K)
These 8 games have sold less than 2.4 million copies combined.

I think it's a similar situation with Sony's recent PC releases, in that the numbers look bad when you compare them to what numbers the same games move on the console itself, both in units and revenue, then compare that to the total install base for Steam being around 130+ million accounts. In THAT context, the numbers are underwhelming...

...except I think with Microsoft, it's more complicated since it's likely Steam is accounting for a majority of their total software sales. I.e if FH5's sold 6+ million on Steam, I doubt it's done another 6 million on Xbox consoles. NPD/Circana rankings would have been better post-release to suggest that to be the case. Same goes for games like Halo Infinite. There's a reason why Microsoft are possibly looking to port these games to other consoles.

Wouldn't be wild to say that Xbox console B2P sales are Microsoft's weakest link in total software B2P sales, even Windows Store is probably contributing better on that front, let alone Steam. And again, we have NPD/Circana rankings, plus sales charts from other countries (UK, Japan, Germany, Spain etc.) and proof that Xbox digital isn't overwhelmingly larger than PlayStation digital when it comes to digital sales splits (absolute terms). Maybe relative to current-gen consoles it is considering how many Series S units are part of total sales base for Series systems, but if even half of PS5's install base are Digital models, that'd eclipse the total number of Series S systems on the market by at least 10 million.

Although FWIW, I don't think HiFi or Psychonauts 2's numbers for Steam are terrible; HiFi as a whole likely underperformed in units sold but that's more because the Xbox console base didn't go out and buy the game. Meanwhile Psychonauts is a very niche IP and 310K on Steam isn't bad in that context, plus they'd also have PS & Switch sales adding to that. Xbox console sales for the game were probably soft, though.
 
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Astray

Member
All of the following games are from the last 4-5 years, and they do not have good sales numbers:
  • Gears 5 (682K)
  • Forza Motorsport (155K)
  • Hi-Fi Rush (668K)
  • Minecraft Dungeons (288K)
  • Minecraft Legends (72K)
  • As Dusk Falls (70K)
  • Psychonauts 2 (310K)
  • Pentiment (147K)
These 8 games have sold less than 2.4 million copies combined.
Why the fuck did Grubb cuck out of his "Hifi Rush was a flop" statement?

If the number above holds then he was absolutely on the money. 700k-ish numbers are awful for a game that took 5 years out of a AAA studio (it's absolutely not AA lmao).

Also Bethesda made Spencer hold the bag big time and made out with the billions just in time..
 
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Why the fuck did Grubb cuck out of his "Hifi Rush was a flop" statement?

If the number above holds then he was absolutely on the money. 700k-ish numbers are awful for a game that took 5 years out of a AAA studio (it's absolutely not AA lmao).

Also Bethesda made Spencer hold the bag big time and made out with the billions just in time..

Nah I think HiFi would be considered about a mid-AA or high-AA game, but it doesn't seem like a AAA game when you compare it against titles which are like Spiderman 2, Street Fighter 6, Final Fantasy XVI, Forza Horizon 5, GT7, ToTK etc. It's not in the same ballpark as those either in budget, production values, scale, or a combination of the three. HiFi has more in common with a high-AA game like Plague Tale: Requiem or the original Hellblade (which by today's standards would probably be a mid-AA at most) than any of those other games I just mentioned.

668K for it on Steam is good in a sense, tho also maybe questionable considering the install base size of Steam users. However that can be true while the game itself still "flopping" in terms of B2P sales elsewhere like Windows Store or on Xbox, or having strong engagement metrics on Game Pass (wasn't it like for a long time only 1% or 2% of people even completed the game on any difficulty?).

Maybe Microsoft were also expecting HiFi to significantly bolster attention to the brand? Which it kind of did with WOM hype but that probably didn't translate over to expected sales metrics. Then again, MS could've just been having a Square-Enix moment where they expected 6 million sales in a week and even if the game hit that they'd still call it a flop. Who knows :/
 

Astray

Member
Nah I think HiFi would be considered about a mid-AA or high-AA game, but it doesn't seem like a AAA game when you compare it against titles which are like Spiderman 2, Street Fighter 6, Final Fantasy XVI, Forza Horizon 5, GT7, ToTK etc. It's not in the same ballpark as those either in budget, production values, scale, or a combination of the three. HiFi has more in common with a high-AA game like Plague Tale: Requiem or the original Hellblade (which by today's standards would probably be a mid-AA at most) than any of those other games I just mentioned.

668K for it on Steam is good in a sense, tho also maybe questionable considering the install base size of Steam users. However that can be true while the game itself still "flopping" in terms of B2P sales elsewhere like Windows Store or on Xbox, or having strong engagement metrics on Game Pass (wasn't it like for a long time only 1% or 2% of people even completed the game on any difficulty?).

Maybe Microsoft were also expecting HiFi to significantly bolster attention to the brand? Which it kind of did with WOM hype but that probably didn't translate over to expected sales metrics. Then again, MS could've just been having a Square-Enix moment where they expected 6 million sales in a week and even if the game hit that they'd still call it a flop. Who knows :/
AA/AAA is a question of budget first and foremost.

This game took 5 years to develop by a AAA studio, so despite it having the scope of a AA game, it's absolutely a AAA one that likely needed a much higher number to break-even.
 

twilo99

Member
Windows 11 Pro 23H2.

Fresh install from a newly built PC purchased from PCSpecialist in December 2022. No issues with the hardware or software otherwise and I play a LOT of games across Steam, EA, Ubisoft and Battle.net. It's just the Xbox app that causes me issues. Games will install fine but then a random update will break the game. Doesn't happen for every game but it happens enough to be an annoyance that other games launchers do not have. GamePass games are installed to different SSDs (NVMe & SATA) but these are the same drives that Steam etc use so the problem isn't with the drives.

I suspect it's Microsoft's intrusive encryption algorithms that are the issue. What makes this worse is that the Microsoft Store and Xbox app still have no proper way of verifying files. You can verify them but it takes literally seconds versus the longer verification process you have on Steam and Ubiconnect etc, and it rarely fixes anything. Unlike other game launchers, Microsoft games are installed to drives that are given a unique ID that is stored in the registry, so you cannot just install the drive with the games preinstalled in a new PC and then expect the Xbox app or Microsoft Store to find and verify them like with Steam and Ubiconnect. You have to reinstall them and that in itself can be a problem if you are trying to install the game to the same drive as the original as it then throws up an error. And you cannot uninstall the original game because the registry entries no longer exist for it. And finding and deleting the original files is also not easy as they are often installed to hidden folders not accessible by normal users. You get these issues with Steam or any other games launchers because they just install to standard folders with all the normal user permissions etc.

I found all this out when I migrated my SSDs with games preinstalled from my old to my new PC. All the games were detected and added to the various libraries for Steam etc except for those by Microsoft. This and the broken updates are the reasons I do not like the Microsoft Store for games and why I try to avoid it using for anything except smaller indie games.

Good to know about the transfer situation, that sucks and you are probably right about it having to do with virtualization or encryption.

I haven't had a single game break on me yet, maybe once I had to reinstall something , but I can't remember which one or what happened. Is it possible that you have 3rd party software that is causing issues?
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
All seem pretty believable, tho I’m surprised by Minecraft dungeons/legends, they don’t interest me, but I’d have expected much higher numbers given Minecraft’s success
people like minecraft because it's minecraft. As soon as you make it something it's not the interest quickly fades. It's nothing as a franchise or a media brand. it's simply a game.
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
If you combine Steam and MS Sea of Thieves is probably at over 20 million units sold.

Goldeneye only sold 8 million. SoT on Steam exceeds that. It really is Rare's most successful game ever.
Mr Beast is the most successful channel on Youtube. By that logic his content must be AMAZING huh?
 

Chukhopops

Member
AA/AAA is a question of budget first and foremost.

This game took 5 years to develop by a AAA studio, so despite it having the scope of a AA game, it's absolutely a AAA one that likely needed a much higher number to break-even.
Not only is Tango not a AAA studio by any metric (less than 100 employees), only a small team was on HFR while the rest was on Ghostwire Tokyo (which released not even one year before).
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
You heard it here, folks. 9.32 million units sold on one store front is simply a repectable number of sales.....
I mean shit. It's not even 10 million. Are you seriously gonna give amazing, humungous praise a game for selling 10 million in 6 years (according to these stats anyways) when


Resident Evil 2 Remake sold that in 5 years
Witcher 3 sold that same amount in a year
God of War 2018 sold double that in 5 years as a PS4 exclusive
TOTK sold that in a week as a Switch exclusive

It's a respectable amount of sales.
 
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AA/AAA is a question of budget first and foremost.

This game took 5 years to develop by a AAA studio, so despite it having the scope of a AA game, it's absolutely a AAA one that likely needed a much higher number to break-even.

The studio itself may be AAA but the team size wasn't the entire studio size. Additionally it's not like the game spent 5 years in deep development; I'm pretty sure the concept itself was drafted up in early 2017 and then development gradually ramped up over a year or so as things got conceptualized out, then fuller development started.

Even at that point, again, I doubt the entirety of Tango was working on it, considering Ghostwire Tokyo was in simultaneous development and probably another game or two at various stages of development themselves. So that's probably why the game took 5 years to release: small team (more AA-sized) going at a slower pace, plus chances the Zenimax acquisition impacted some pace of development temporarily.

I mean as another example, Pentiment was made by Obsidian but that doesn't mean it's a high-AA game. It's closer to a low-cost AA type of game. Probably costed even less to develop than Hellblade back in the day, I'd be surprised if Pentiment's budget was over $5 million. You can't always correlate a game's budget tier with the development studio's size, because many studios have multiple smaller teams within them.

Fuck that. As shitty as the new entry is, death to Forza Motorsport would leave GT as the only simcade on the market. Most of these PC sim guys couldn't make a good campaign, atmosphere, or nice UI to save their lives...

Well maybe, but if Forza's not willing to step up their quality I don't think it deserves to exist simply to have "something" present to compete with GT. Does Smash Bros. need an equal party/fighter around to keep its quality up? Yeah it would be nice if one of these other clones took off big time, but that isn't a requirement I feel. There isn't really any consistent 3D platforming competitor for Mario, either, but they're always able to reinvent and make great 3D Mario games consistently.

Heck look at the quality GT1 & 2 were able to bring when there was basically no (notable) competition in sim racers on console at the time. It's pretty clear Yamauchi & Polyphony have an unbridled passion for car culture and racing, they don't need an outside competitor around to keep them pushing forward. Just their own internal passion for the culture and sport.
 
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64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
Well maybe, but if Forza's not willing to step up their quality I don't think it deserves to exist simply to have "something" present to compete with GT. Does Smash Bros. need an equal party/fighter around to keep its quality up? Yeah it would be nice if one of these other clones took off big time, but that isn't a requirement I feel. There isn't really any consistent 3D platforming competitor for Mario, either, but they're always able to reinvent and make great 3D Mario games consistently.

Heck look at the quality GT1 & 2 were able to bring when there was basically no (notable) competition in sim racers on console at the time. It's pretty clear Yamauchi & Polyphony have an unbridled passion for car culture and racing, they don't need an outside competitor around to keep them pushing forward. Just their own internal passion for the culture and sport.
yeah. Now where can I buy Gran Turismo 7 on PC?

That's why we need a competitor
 

Havoc2049

Member
Who's reported that it sold 15 million copies and what source(s) were they using?
Sea of Thieves is on this list at 15 million. Not sure of the accuracy of everything on this list, although I know the 81 million number for the Halo franchise was put out by MS a little while back.

The hard numbers we have are the 2 million on launch month and then 9.3 million on Steam. Then when SoT hit the 5 million player mark in 2018, Rare was asked how much of those were copies sold and how much are GP subscribers and they said a little over half were copies sold. So that puts us at like 12 million. So that leaves about 5 years unaccounted for on XB and Microsoft PC game store sales. There has been some large expansions of the SoT universe and the two Disney collaborations during that time, so they could have realistically sold another 3 million+ copies during that time on XB and MS PC store.
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
Sea of Thieves is on this list at 15 million. Not sure of the accuracy of everything on this list, although I know the 81 million number for the Halo franchise was put out by MS a little while back.

The hard numbers we have are the 2 million on launch month and then 9.3 million on Steam. Then when SoT hit the 5 million player mark in 2018, Rare was asked how much of those were copies sold and how much are GP subscribers and they said a little over half were copies sold. So that puts us at like 12 million. So that leaves about 5 years unaccounted for on XB and Microsoft PC game store sales. There has been some large expansions of the SoT universe and the two Disney collaborations during that time, so they could have realistically sold another 3 million+ copies during that time on XB and MS PC store.

Sea of thieves will have easily hit 15 million imo. The tineframe, the steady support and big expansions. Sales etc.
 
Assuming these numbers are true,
  • Some are incredible (Sea of Thieves)
  • Some are decent (Grounded, Ori)
  • Some are downright terrible (Forza, Redfall, MSFS, Gears 5, Psy 2, etc.)
My biggest takeaway from here is that it is the more recent games that have performed poorly. And that's a big worry, if true.

All of the following games are from the last 4-5 years, and they do not have good sales numbers:
  • Gears 5 (682K)
  • Forza Motorsport (155K)
  • Hi-Fi Rush (668K)
  • Minecraft Dungeons (288K)
  • Minecraft Legends (72K)
  • As Dusk Falls (70K)
  • Psychonauts 2 (310K)
  • Pentiment (147K)
These 8 games have sold less than 2.4 million copies combined.

I'm not necessarily buying the accuracy of these numbers, but it does correspond largely with the advent of GamePass.
 
yeah. Now where can I buy Gran Turismo 7 on PC?

That's why we need a competitor

Wait, are you saying Forza Motorsport needs to exist so that GT7 can get ported to PC? I don't think that's the case and TBH I don't think anything but a GaaS-centric GT variant should probably get ported to PC anyhow.

Sea of Thieves is on this list at 15 million. Not sure of the accuracy of everything on this list, although I know the 81 million number for the Halo franchise was put out by MS a little while back.

The hard numbers we have are the 2 million on launch month and then 9.3 million on Steam. Then when SoT hit the 5 million player mark in 2018, Rare was asked how much of those were copies sold and how much are GP subscribers and they said a little over half were copies sold. So that puts us at like 12 million. So that leaves about 5 years unaccounted for on XB and Microsoft PC game store sales. There has been some large expansions of the SoT universe and the two Disney collaborations during that time, so they could have realistically sold another 3 million+ copies during that time on XB and MS PC store.

Slight problem here; Rare's answer to that question was in 2018. In 2018, a little over half were copies sold. That doesn't account for 2019 and forward.

Anyway I think the point is, the game's got an audience and that's good for the game. But I guess me calling it "respectable" was seen as a dig, even if I were just taking into account the launch problems with the game and the fact a lot of copies were sold at discounted prices because the game's regularly on sale on Steam, its biggest platform for B2P sales. I can believe the 15 million number; I'm just saying in the realm of most other GaaS titles I'd consider "major successes", SoT is on the lower end of that, which is a fair assessment.

Again I'm talking revenue from B2P copies sold; there's no telling what revenue MTX & DLC have generated for the game. It could be a ton, could be a decent amount or could be low. I will say in light of many of MS's other 1P titles, Sea of Thieve's B2P sales are very strong, but the past few years that hasn't been a high bar to cross outside of Minecraft and maybe Forza Horizon (sticking to pre-Zenimax & ABK acquisition games here).
 
Good to know about the transfer situation, that sucks and you are probably right about it having to do with virtualization or encryption.

I haven't had a single game break on me yet, maybe once I had to reinstall something , but I can't remember which one or what happened. Is it possible that you have 3rd party software that is causing issues?

My PC may be unique in that I have 15 internal and external drives in total, all SSDs (NVMe and SATA3) except for three hard drives (used for older games and backups), with a library of over 900 games, most on Steam. Maybe the Xbox app works fine with two or three drives but not with the number I have where I have games installed across 12 different drives. I can't imagine Microsoft test their software with the kind of PC that I have!
 
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