Thing is, those correlations with game pass and the increase of sales data doesn't hold up when you look at NPD.
We don't know one way or another what gamepass did to increase sales on games like Sea of thieves, because they launched on the service the same time they released digitally and physically. If they came later to gamepass and we had sales data for the opening month or so and could compare it to lets say a month down the line when gamepass launched that game it would be a different story.
The real story is how would have state of decay 2 and sea of thieves done without gamepass? And seeing the NPD numbers they seem to fall off a cliff after the honeymoon period. We kind of need some sort of data break down because as it is it's weird. So if phil and NPD analysts are using the number of newly added subs and seeing those people buy the said game they download through gamepass. What's the data look like after launch? ANd also what were they expecting pre-gamepass? I don't think they expected those games to do well at all, so I think they made the decision to put them on gamepass. Which to me muddies the data in how a game is doing sales wise.
Hopefully Mat will do a follow-up on the matter. He's the one with all the NPD data afterall. Of course he couldn't speak about MS's internal projections (pre/post Game Pass), but his input is still the best we can have.
I kind of want straight up digital and physical numbers for actual sales of those games. I honestly think Gamepass is another smart way for MS to hide the fact that their games are not strong on their own to sell. And the way they have incorporated the whole xbox division into windows for their sales metrics also doesn't help either.
At lest with Nintendo and Sony we get somewhat hard numbers at least for physical. With MS it's, "we have 2 million concurrent players on sea of thieves" or something like that.
I would like if someone could get a hold of Mat and ask what the numbers are for actual hard copies sold for Sea of thieves, State of Decay 2.
It's no secret that a lot of MS games this gen didn't sell that well, or at least underperformed compared to previous entries. You won't be getting sales anymore though, even for games that are successful such as the recent Forza Horizon 4. All they talk about are milestones in player count and if the sales are really that good, they add something to their PR (such as «FH4 is the best selling racing games so far on Xbox», etc...). MS might not release numbers anymore to the general public (and I understand it can cause some concerns to some), but there's still some analysts that get the data. Here we have Mat and Benji for exemple, so we can get some informations from them (such as Mat saying Game Pass can actually help sales). Their insights are the best we get.
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