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There’s been a spate of stories coming out of Xbox this week – an overwhelming amount, if you will.
While not all of it is relevant, the Redmond firm finds itself tangled up in the PS5 ecosystem; even with the return of two console exclusives, the company announced several new PlayStation games during its Xbox Showcase last week, like Senua and State of Decay 3.
However, following the publication of an internal memo this week, in which new CEO Asha Sharma revealed the division has been operating at a 3% accountability margin which will sadly lead to layoffs, more information has been filtering out about the firm’s first-party failures.
Primarily, even with PS5 ports, the majority of its games have struggled, both in terms of raw sales and even Xbox Game Pass engagement statistics.
Windows Central reports that it’s all been a bit of a mess internally, as – wait for it – Avowed, Keeper, Kiln, South of Midnight, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, Forza Motorsport, The Outer Worlds 2, Minecraft Legends, Ninja Gaiden 4, Bleeding Edge, Battletoads, and Towerborne all failed to live up to expectations.
Not all of these games launched on PS5, of course, but many of them did – some at a later date.
Windows Central says Microsoft has released some hits over the past few years, like Forza Horizon 5, of course, which has sold over five million copies on the PS5 alone.
Other games like Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered have sold in line with expectations, but they’re the exceptions to the rule.
Elsewhere, Microsoft apparently invested heavily into projects like Perfect Dark, which ultimately ended up being cancelled; it also axed a bunch of collaborations with third-party developers, like Avalanche’s Contraband, which was announced a few years ago.
I’ve been saying for a while, both privately on our Push Square Slack chat and publicly, that I think Xbox has been releasing too many games with too little fanfare. A lot of the abovementioned titles arrived with very little promotion or marketing; I’m not surprised people didn’t care.
But I think it’s interesting to compare this information with the latest Alinea Analytics estimates for Sony’s first-party sales as well; Ghost of Yotei is selling really well on the PS5, but other smaller projects like Saros are apparently not.
I know it’s been a big point of controversy among PlayStation fans, but I think increasingly we’re starting to see evidence of why Sony doubled down on the heavy hitters; it’ll probably sell 20 million copies of Marvel’s Wolverine, but it’s really tough to achieve any level of success on so-called “AA” releases when the market is so flooded with choice.
I know there have been notable exceptions like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, but they seem increasingly rare.
This may not be what enthusiasts want to hear, but I wouldn’t be surprised if major publishers cut down on the amount of projects they fund, and started to focus on the big tentpoles.
There’s an abundance of content across all platforms these days, but I’m not sure consumers have the time, energy, or even enthusiasm to support all of this software. Something has to give.