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Gears 5’s abysmal Steam debut could tell us something about the potential audience for Xbox exclusives on Steam - VG247

If you are playing Gears 5 on PC, what storefront did you use?

  • Steam

    Votes: 187 12.6%

  • Game Pass

    Votes: 1,236 83.5%

  • Windows Store

    Votes: 54 3.6%
  • Total voters
    1,481

Deleted member 58846

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If Gears 5 is any indication, the audience for Microsoft's first-party games on Steam may not be as big as we initially assumed. For the longest time, fans of Xbox franchises have been asking Microsoft to make its games available on PC.
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Gears 5 is the first Xbox exclusive to be released after this major shift, but it's not looking great for its Steam debut. Despite landing on Steam's top-sellers list, Gears 5 only managed a concurrent player count of 10,196 since its release.
The numbers have declined since then, as is standard, but 10,000 remains a very small figure considering the size of the franchise, and the reach of Steam. Before Gears 5, the assumption was that the Steam audience is hungry for these big Xbox exclusives. For reference, 10,000 is not enough to land in Steam's top 25 most played games.
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SOURCE

While I have to admit that the Steam numbers for Gears 5 are low, I also do wonder how much of that is down to a) Gears not having that strong association with PC, unlike something like Halo, and b) Game Pass encroaching on those Steam numbers.

On the whole, however, I do think that the Gears audience is obviously largely in the Microsoft ecosystem, and feel that this stands as another reason as to why the arguments for any platform holder to go third party are bunk.
 
Serene

Serene

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Oct 25, 2017
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Who is paying $60 for Gears on Steam when Game Pass exists
 

Deleted member 8196

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Gears 5 is 70€ in Europe (highest than 99% of AAA games)
Gamepass is cheap
Gears 5 is the 5th or 6th entry of a console centric series, deeply connected to Xbox more than PC/Windows.

I think only hardcore fans bought the game full price on both Xbox and PC (assuming there are hardcore fans), so it's not surprising.

Halo Infinite will do way better, MS wants to cultivate a fanbase by releasing the MCC on Steam first compared to Gears, they didn't bother to bring to GoW Ultimate or 4 on Steam before Gears 5.
 
Hektor

Hektor

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The headline is dumb garbage, as the article itself actually acknowledges, Gears 5 can be played for 5 bucks on PC gamepass, something that undoubtetly impacted potential steam sale numbers a lot.

It doesn't tell us anything about the potential audience for it on steam.
 
Lant_War

Lant_War

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Expensive game available on a much cheaper subscription service

Not really surprising.
 
LewieP

LewieP

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Oct 26, 2017
18,093
I think Master Chief Collection will be a bigger barometer.

The 5th entry is perhaps not as good of a jump on point for people. There's a good chance that the Steam audience haven't played most of the rest of the series.

Edit: and yeah the Steam price is a little high, at least for it to be an impulse purchase. It's had a good reception, and positive word of mouth, I bet it'll do well on Steam when they start discounting it down the line. Probably doing reasonably well on Game Pass PC though.

Edit2: and yeah those numbers aren't terrible. It's not an explosive success, but it's not a huge failure.
 
Dalik

Dalik

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Nov 1, 2017
3,528
It's 70€ (yes,70) in all (?) of europe, of course its not going to do well, especially when game pass exists.
 
ExtremelyBitter

ExtremelyBitter

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Oct 25, 2017
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Serene said:
Who is paying $60 for Gears on Steam when Game Pass exists
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Basically this.

After finding out Outer Worlds is going to be a Game Pass game, the EGS exclusivity seems meaningless because who is paying full price anyway. 10k concurrent players on Steam seems like a lot given it's opting in to spending way more.
 
Tiddy

Tiddy

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Oct 25, 2017
1,024
If I was interested in Gears 5 I would play it with gamepass and buy it when there's a huge discount on it.
 
GhostTrick

GhostTrick

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Oct 25, 2017
11,305
If anything, the fact that the game reached 10k concurrent users when it's a 70€ release when there's a 2€ option to play it suggest the opposite.
 
Kurt Russell

Kurt Russell

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Oct 25, 2017
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Gears had awful regional pricing here, while we could play it for 2 monts paying 2 dollars. I'm not a fan of "renting" games, but if I have to choose between paying 3000 pesos for a game and playing it through a subscription service that will charge me 2 dollars for 2 months, you can bet I'm going with the sub.
 
OP
OP

Deleted member 58846

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Would anyone have any idea as to how big Game Pass is on PC? I know it's massive on Xbox, and I also know that the game itself has done well on Game Pass, but I am more curious as to how big the service is on PC.
 
Pitou

Pitou

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Oct 25, 2017
3,119
I had two options

Pay 80 Canadian dollars for it
or
get a free month of gamepass to play it
 
bsigg

bsigg

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Oct 25, 2017
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Why would you buy it on Steam when you can sub to Game Pass for PC for a month for $10 and play through it?
 
'V'

'V'

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You should do a poll to see who bought it on GamePass or Steam. It won't be representative but it would give a ballpark idea in general. I'd wager the vast majority of people playing the game used the GP deal.
 
Duffking

Duffking

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Oct 27, 2017
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I for one am playing using PC gamepass. I imagine we'll get a picture of how bad this is for the Steam version once the Halo collection starts to land. If it does similar numbers on Steam we can probably conclude it's just because most are on GamePass as there's definitely some Halo thirst on the PC community.
 
Madjoki

Madjoki

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Oct 25, 2017
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Gamepass for $1 or $80 (for regular version) on Steam....

4un9fnq.png
 
LewieP

LewieP

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Patent said:
To the people saying its because gamepass, isnt that supposed to increase sales thought ms said it did
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I think it does manage that on console, but I don't think MS have said it in reference to Steam sales before. On console it kinda makes sense, because it's think like seeing your friends play it that helps boost engagement, but Game Pass players on PC don't impact visibility on Steam.
 
AllEchse

AllEchse

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Oct 29, 2017
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Now I want to see the gamepass PC numbers, that could make or break the argument of the article.
Even then I expect Halo to do much better when it comes over.
 
Evolution of Metal

Evolution of Metal

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Oct 27, 2017
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Reaching any kind of conclusion based on the few days of data is pointless.

We are going rounds with a snippet of data on the rollercoaster:
Most popular on Xbox -> Gamepass megahit -> 7th on Xbox after a couple of days -> Xbox Exclusive not doing too well on Steam

Give it a few weeks. We will see where it settles down on both Steamcharts and Xbox charts, maybe then we will be able to cobble some kind of conclusion.
 
.exe

.exe

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It tells me that €70 is too much money when it can be played on Game Pass for 1/70th the price.
 
formasymphonic

formasymphonic

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Patent said:
To the people saying its because gamepass, isnt that supposed to increase sales thought ms said it did
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
There is no reason that the game pass numbers would show in steam sales figures.I'd imagine a lot of the PC Gears players were savvy enough to jump on the recent game pass signups (either the E3 conversion, or that recent $2). So none of those would show up in Steam.
 
SteveWinwood

SteveWinwood

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Oct 25, 2017
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i would say the numbers are really good considering it costs a hell of a lot more to get it on steam and people are willing to do that still compared to a few bucks to essentially rent it
 
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