Beloved, Brutal Metroidvania Nine Sols Is on the Approach to Selling 1 Million Copies

Day 1 on Game Pass which apparently tanks sales... or perhaps it can increase mindshare and increase them, especially for smaller titles.

PS+ did similar for Fall Guys, Rocket League etc.

Buy this game. Let’s get the support rolling for games that have finely crafted core gameplay and narrative concepts in the indie space. One of the absolute best games last year. It can be brutal on base difficulty, but there’s also difficulty sliders, so it can be as challenging as you’d like. Don’t sleep on this one.

@Flaming_Kaiser Without any real in depth metrics I think subscription services works most effectively for boosting smaller games, especially those that don't have a large marketing budget. This might be AA as well as indie, but the net benefit is all the increased mindshare - articles, discussion and recommendations - can create more total sales than they might lose, plus the subscription pay check. It won't happen for every game, but many devs sing loudly about the benefits of Game Pass and want to be in it.

Whereas for AAA games with a large marketing budget it probably eats into sales somewhat. But despite whatever the baser denizens of the internet tell us SALES alone aren't always the most important metric anymore. In fact sales never were, profit & loss was, but we aren't usually privy to that info. But crucially we don't know what was paid in that Game Pass bag, as that could change everything.

Moreover as artists most devs just want as many people as possible to play their art, and for it to have been enough of a success to make another without too much oversight. Game Pass, and PS+ can be great for this especially for more niche titles. I've certainly played a lot of great games I would never have bought.

@Oram77 And if we take Doom the Dark Ages, for example, we're kind of in the dark about its success. Id Software said the game "reached" 3 million players days after it came out. All right. Good number. Better then Doom Eternal. But then Alinea Analytics reported the game sold 200,000 copies on PlayStation 5, 200,000 on Xbox, and 400,000 on Steam, and that 2.2 million players played the game through Game Pass. My question is: with 800,000 copies sold and 2.2mi players accessing it through a subscription service, is it a hit or not?

I have gotten Nine Sols but haven't gotten around to play it yet. As I'm a sucker for 2D Metroidvanias, it's gonna be one of my next games

I don’t agree with this at all. Game Pass is AMAZING at shining a light on a wide range of games and really highlighting some hidden gems people might not play e.g. just in the last 3 months we’ve had Blue Prince, To a T, Expedition 33, Doom Dark Ages, Citizen Sleeper 2, Balatro, Avowed, South of Midnight, Eternal Strands and many more. The one thing it definitely has is diversity.

It certainly has its issues ESPECIALLY for the games that don’t get on Game Pass, and the long term effects of that, among other things. But as a consumer it’s exemplary.