Starfield could be biggest launch of 2023. No. 1 in the UK boxed charts

Kokoloko

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The addition of gamepass is weird.

He says biggest launch including gamepass.

Did those other games he is comparing against launch on gamepass? Such a silly comment to make.

He also says he expects 80%. Sounds like he doesnt know anything yet. And Diablo wasnt on Gamepass so might be different numbers.
Will just have to see. It will be Xbox’s biggest selling game this year from 1st party at least lol
 
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Bryank75

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As many have said... Gamepass isn't sales.

Biggest launch by what metric so?

A mix of players and sales?

It's funny how these people bend the metrics every which way for Microsoft and then call FFXVI sales underwhelming or say they didn't hit expectations.

It's exhausting dealing with these people.
 

Entropi

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It’s behind every other major release this year, but it’s very significant at the same time?

Why are people afraid of calling it for what it is? Behind every other major release when it comes to sales.

I’m sure it was huge in gamepass hours played.
 
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JAHGamer

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There's no need to spin what is plainly mistaken in the tweet. Game Pass is not a sale - no matter how many people try to argue that a download is equivalent to a sale - it is not. It is annoying that MS and now so many others are still trying to use these bs metrics to indicate success and also, even more so, trying to convince everyone else they are too.
So we’re redefining what success is because Xbox? 7th or 8th best selling game of the year and it’s the most successful because people rented it? Should Sony and Nintendo just hang it up then if that’s what success is now?
Microsoft has ruined so much of gaming discourse that it's now almost impossible to have an objective and constructive dialogue about anything.
 

Danja

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It's so funny how the media is so afraid to be honest about the game and everything around it.

They all stayed silent on the soft blacklisting.

Now we have Chris literally saying its boxed sales are behind that of pretty much every big hitter of 2023... but he's sure digital sales (he won't have access to for another 5 days) will give it the edge over a game like Hogwarts lol.

I know quite a few people who tried the game on Game Pass and literally uninstalled it after a few days.... so why even attempt to use Game Pass to further pad sales, when he in the past said Game Pass is eating away at sales.

Time for Jim Ryan to find a new favorite Journalist to give his exclusive interviews to.
 

Cool hand luke

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Yep. they quickly 🏃🏻🥅🏃🏻 once they saw CCU were not going up.
Great points in this one - Steam is 4x the size it was when Fallout 4 launched in 2015. This is horrific, career-ending stuff from the Trash Factory at Zenimax. They'll be thinking about restructuring based on these poor results. Someone should make a thread treating this restructuring as fact.

A big middle finger to all those who kept banging the drum about FFXVI's sales. Still more successful than Starfield
 
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Thief1987

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Dabaus

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Just picking select quotes from 4chan:

Fallout 4 peaked at 472k players on steam against 2 consoles and Bethesda launcher, since then steam TRIPLED in size.
In 2023, Starfield can't even beat fallout 4 against ONE dead console (20 million units, steam wipes the floor with it several times) and ONE dead store.
>But gamepass 6 million players
1.)Forza Horizon 5 had 10 million players in 2021 and gamepass numbers grew since then
2.)Steam is probably making up 1-2 million of those players. Let's be generous and give 1 million xbox+Microsoft store.
3.)Even a well known flop, Hi-Fi Rush, managed to clear 2 million players thanks to gamepass
4.)Most importantly, steam bros are extremely loyal to their online drm store, which is why claiming they went to Microsoft store is laughable.
5.) In total, the gamepass deal drew 3-4 mil players. But what is "player"? A person clicked on the play button once.

Bonus:
>but one million concurrent players btfo!
Baldur's Gate also came out on gog, and gog numbers are unknown.
 

Numero

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Dring usually really tries his best to give good xbox spins in his comments, but this time he's tryharding. Pushing gamepass players into sales is the new low of industry media. Such a bad take. Starfield is doing good, but it's clear that he's required to give the biggest spin possible.
Also, Diablo is an always online gaas game, while Starfield is a single player experience. One would notice that the Diablo would possibly be more shifted towards digital, but somehow context in these cases disappears completely.
 

Nimrota

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I’m guessing that Microsoft prefers a Game Pass sub even if the person drops it after a month. They still get accustomed to Game Pass and will be more likely to sub again when another interesting GP game launches, and eventually they may turn into a full time sub. And if not MS still gets the revenue for a month of GP plus potentially a later sale albeit at a discount.
From Era. Losing millions of sales at $70ea is worth it for a higher chancer somebody subs at $15 a month. Laughable.
 

Zeno

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28 Jun 2023
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"add in Gamepass" Yeah maybe lets no do that in a sales context

With Starfield I find it much more interesting to understand if the economics behind it work out (development budget, sales + increase of Game Pass subscribers)

"Biggst launch of the year" says nothing to me if existing subscribers already receive the game automatically.
 

MaxParrish

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8 Jan 2023
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TOTK SELLS 10m in 3 days, Starfield has 6m "players" in a week. and this guy is saying it could be the biggest launch of the year "because GamePass".
On the oher hands, he is only talking about UK sales, so world numbers have little to do it...