If Xbox Game Pass helps drive one thing it's huge player numbers - especially for some of the bigger AAA games out there. Naturally, Xbox's own first-party releases get lots of attention on Game Pass — and indeed the platform in general — and influencer Klobrille has gathered some of the team's recent numbers to give us an updated look at how the lineup is doing.
In total, Klobrille has pulled together 11 Xbox titles where the development teams have shared their player numbers in recent times - including the likes of Starfield, Forza Horizon 5, Sea Of Thieves and more. The infographic is available in the tweet down below:
Some of these numbers are really, really impressive. For how it launched back in 2018 it's fantastic to see Sea of Thieves hit such a high player count, especially on the eve of Rare opening the game up to even more players on PS5. Starfield's numbers are looking great for a game that's less than six months old too, and as for Forza Horizon 5, well, Xbox's open world racer just keeps on doing the business!
There are lots of other big milestones in this lineup, so congrats to the teams involved in making this happen! We'd expect these sorts of numbers to keep on growing alongside Xbox Game Pass, which just hit a new milestone of its own not long ago.
Impressed by these Xbox Game Studios numbers? Tell us which number you think is the most impressive down below.
Comments 16
Really great numbers - but if Klobrille wasn’t creating these infographics no one would have a clue.
Xbox should really show off this sort of stuff better in my opinion.
Sea of Thieves and Grounded are very impressive numbers already.
Well done Forza Horizon 5
The only real proper big AAA Xbox studios have released since the series x release date.
I am still playing FH5. It is such a great game. Surprised by the Grounded and SoT player count. Excited to see these go up even more!
@OldGamer999 It is? Really?
Thing is, while these numbers sound impressive... are they really? For example, does Halo Infinite have a fraction of the reported 20 million players actively and/or regularly playing it? Does that number translate to decent sales or in-game spending? To me, Microsoft's insistence on reporting player numbers rather than sales or revenue speaks volumes.
@cburg
Well it is for me Halo Infinite campaign wise I really enjoyed but should have been more.
But the FPS and grappling hook game control was spot on for me.
Should have had some good DLC campaign by now, but it won’t ever happen now.
FH5 delivers new content weekly. I'm on my 26th month of playing and still loving it. The weekly playlist and updates differentiate it from Need for Speed.
@Markatron84 Sales don't tell the whole story and revenue is difficult too when you have 30+ million paying into a Subscription service every month regardless of whether they play these games or not on a 'regular' basis.
Sales don't indicate player engagement - it's just 'units' sold - not whether they were installed, played for 20mins' or finished, and counts whether you bought at Full price or picked up in a sale...
No 'metric' is perfect, but at least you can say 35+ have at least 'tried' Sea of Thieves - a game that would probably of sold a few million and likely died without Game Pass letting people try it for free, Game Pass Subs contributing to its growth and Seasonal content...
I'm never impressed by these figures for any sub service , isn't this basically just downloads
@BAMozzy that's a problem Microsoft brought on itself by pivoting so hard into a subscription model. But the answer is simple: report all three - total players, sales and revenue (from copies sold and in-game spending) - to give a clearer and more transparent picture of how a game is actually performing. As you say, saying Sea of Thieves has 35 million players only says that 35 million people tried it; it in no way indicates how well the game performed.
@OldGamer999 i love halo infinite yes they had a taugh 2022 but the compain is so fun and the multiplayer was always great jus the leak of contents 2022 ...
Also starfield is great next to hifi rush
@supercalifragilistic Not in the case of FH5. There are 37 million players/accounts on the leaderboard. One has to progress enough through the game to get on the leaderboard.
@TakeItEasy
Starfield was love/hate for me but somehow I managed 65 hours game play.
It will be interesting to see if they give an updated player count for pentiment and hi fi rush in a few months. Or if Sea of Thieves and grounded will hit another milestone.
@Markatron84 I disagree - that's more a 'you' problem who won't accept a different metric than Sales because maybe Sales were the 'only' metric - despite not really saying whether the game was actually played or enjoyed. Bundle games, like Kinect Sports, outsold many games simply because it was 'bundled' in.
A game like Returnal - an award winning game only reached around 560k 'gamers' in its first 3 months on SALE. Yet Halo Infinite had Millions of players in its first day! Is it better to have half a million pay $70 in revenue or for 35million paying $10-15 every month as well as selling games at $70 and counting 'players' that actually played 'some' of the game. Of the 560k that bought Returnal, you have no idea if they even bothered playing more than the opening level/mission - its just 'units' sold.
Sales help boost sales figures but if a $70 game is only $20 in a sale, that's not bringing in the same revenue. It also doesn't indicate if that person even bothered installing or how much they enjoyed and played the game either... its just an additional number on the sales figures that tells you nothing. A game could go on to sell 10m but again doesn't say if that was due to hype, a decent game or so cheap that it was worth 'trying'....
@BAMozzy
I mean... I literally said they should be transparent with all metrics, but ok 🙄
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