Xbox Studios 'Player Numbers' Graphic Provides Interesting Look At Microsoft's Most-Played Franchises

I guess I see why so many chase the GaaS model. When it's big it's BIG. Still, it always feels like a gamble.
It's not my cup of tea, personally. I prefer single player games, but I can see how the big suits see those numbers and want a piece of the pie. Should see the numbers of the ones that fail, too. 😂

@themightyant but it's also the newest franchise, less than a year old. Those others have been out for years.

No gears up shows where it ranks in priorities disgraceful as usual but halo is God and sliced bread rolled into one don't you know!!

This again shows why Xbox are going after a different future. I don’t think that they will stop altogether with hardware, but will make less of it as they know it isn’t doing to sell in hundreds of millions anymore.

I’d like to see the next Xbox be hybrid. Powerful PC type with handheld module that can play games natively . But that would be very costly to the consumer.

The numbers are impressive though. That’s a hell of a lot of players but I guess the question from this is whether all those players are helping with revenue and I guess that could either be a lot or very little at all.

@themightyant Its not bad for something that ONLY released less than 1 year ago, is a Single Player game (so no reason to jump in and try with friends/family) and ONLY released on Series S/X and PC hardware. State of Decay 2 can be played on XB1S/X as well but those gamers who haven't upgraded can only play Starfield if they Subscribe to Game Pass 'Ultimate' for Cloud streaming.

SoD2 has a lot more 'years' and of course potential hype for SoD3 to help attract players. Friends/Family who enjoy may also get players to 'try it' with them socially.

Considering that MSFS released in 2020 before coming to Series S/X consoles in 2021, it would seem to have attracted only 1m more for a 'truly' next gen game. That had a very high average rating from Critics - higher than Starfield and many thought Starfield was 'dated' in its design and game-play loop. Spider-Man2, regarded as the fastest selling PS game, had reached 11m in April.

Some AAA games celebrate reaching 1 or 2 million players...

@Ricky-Spanish at least PureXbox mentioned Gears. No one had mentioned Halo at all until you have. It’s a sad state of affairs.

I used to play Halo several times a week. Absolutely loved what MCC had become finally and Infinite while stunted was good time for the most part.

Gears as a franchise has a future but Halo is pretty much dead right now. I don’t see myself going back either. I’m getting too old to throw so much time into live service/multiplayer games.

@MjJmediablogger I don't think it will be 'very' costly to Gamers if MS did some sort of PC Handheld 'Hybrid' solution. They have their Surface range already and it wouldn't be too much of a 'stretch' for MS to introduce a Surface Handheld PC to 'compete' with Asus (RoG Ally), Lenovo (Go) or MSi (Claw) for example.

As for a 'docking' system for TV/Monitor users, again they 'could' offer their own 'eGPU' with a HDMI output to TV - or just let you buy a third party 'eGPU' dock. I can dock my RoG Ally to my TV through an eGPU (although now that also won't require a 'bespoke' connection with the RoG Ally X). Saves them 'investing' in their own manufacturing and design and give Customers more choice - whether you want any eGPU, whether you want nVidia, AMD or intel and as long as it has the right Thunderbolt USB connection, and HDMI 2.1 output port, can use any '3rd' Party eGPU to 'dock'.

If they go the 'Handheld' PC route, you could see new iterations coming fairly regularly as 'new' generation Chips become available. Designing a 'Console' handheld to last 5yrs + is harder with Handheld PC's becoming cheaper and more powerful yearly as well as Mobile Phones becoming more powerful and maybe even able to run games natively that compete with handheld consoles inn terms of Visuals and Frame rates.

I think it makes more sense to 'merge' Surface and 'Xbox hardware' into one hardware division and release a Surface Handheld Gaming PC. Look at how 'cheap' you can find a RoG Ally for that plays 'Xbox' games anyway as well as offers Steam (Playstation games) and many other Gaming providers - not just 'Microsoft' like a Console does.

This sort of stuff looks good to investors & for execs trying to justify their pay or for people playing the console war nonsense

To me they are pretty much meaningless. I just play what's fun and it doesn't matter if 1 or 100 million other people also play.

@ParsnipHero I only mention halo because Gears to me is a much better franchise they never gave it half the support that halo got I don't dislike halo but Microsoft treat gears like crap compared to halo and it's not really that popular anymore if Sony owned gears they would have made more of it by now that's all rant over ha

@themightyant what you say is true.

Plus this is a meaningless statistic. Because plenty of people try a game and bounce off after 30mins because of subscription models, yet are still counted as a player.

Usually companies stretch to different statistics because by usual measures it’s not doing as well as expected.

Not to mention there is 30mil (approx) GP subscribers. Plus sales on PC. I’d fully agree it’s probably not done as well as hoped. ( and in a personal opinion part of the reason the multi platform is happening)

@Ricky-Spanish I understand why you might think MS tears Gears as a franchise like crap. They probably have but I do believe Gears has been treated better than Halo in the last decade though.

Both franchises are treated very poorly by Microsoft though. They love to use the IPs on marketing but do little more than that.

I’m hopefully for the Gears franchise though. I hope E-Day doesn’t disappoint fans like Infinite has for Halo.

Agree dont understand how some people seem to have expected that Starfield would become the most played game in just a year. To me it seems to have performed pretty well. And just as @BAMozzy points out its first and foremost a singel player game released on two specific platfroms. Please why cant some people have some patient lol.

So if I right now downloaded say Starfield using my game pass ultimate.
Played it for one minute.

Would that count as one player?

@themightyant Maybe biggest in scale but in reality, it was little different to Fallout but the bar had seriously been raised by games like BG3 or even The Witcher 3 too. Also maybe MS's biggest release, but in reality, it was a pretty average 'release' overall. Just 1 of many big AAA games released and not even amongst the 'best' based on Reviews. In terms of the 'year' of releases, I doubt Starfield was the 'biggest' in terms of critical reception.

It's also a new IP - so won't have a big fanbase eager to jump in for 'more'. It was limited to just Series S/X and PC too, and we know Xbox has the worst 'install' base of gamers to buy/play.

In less than a year, it has amassed over 14m Players - regardless of whether they tried it for an hour or played it for 100's of hours. It has been able to reach 14m despite its 'limited' release and being a Single Player game - not a Social game that people will play 'casually' with friends/family...

@OldGamer999 I expect that many would take much longer in the opening Character creation and then at least maybe complete the 'opening' section before the game really starts - the tutorial area before you even get to 'fly' or begin the 'open' RPG side. That can take an hour...

I'd imagine that its those that at least completed the tutorial section...

I think you are right about Halo struggling for a future, @ParsnipHero, but that is an awful lot down to the wrong priorities for the franchise. Are you aware of all the recent polls (that's multiple polls, not just one from one website) that have taken place recently regarding what people most want from Halo, be that Campaign or multiplayer? An average of 80% want more Campaigns, with fewer than 20% wanting 343 to concentrate on the multiplayer. And what has Microsoft got 343 doing? Yep, that's right, multiplayer! Now, I accept that that is where the money is to be made, what with cosmetics, battle passes, etc. but that is not what the fans actually want. And, if you fail to give the fans what they want, they just won't turn up at all...

I think there is another problem that Halo Infinite faced, @ParsnipHero, which led to there being such a big delay between games (and which Gears of War did not face between 4 and 5), and that was engines. Halo Infinite was built using a new Slipspace engine, meaning that it required entirely different assets to be built from the ground up, thus prolonging the development time. The next Halo is apparently going to swap again, this time using Unreal 5, so once again, there will be some delays in making the assets, etc., though probably not as long as with Slipspace due to Unreal being a more 'mainstream' engine that can share some assets with other games.

Moving to Unreal 5 is also why there is a significant delay between Gears 5 and Gears of War: E-Day, which is rumoured to be a launch title for the next Xbox in 2026, and will mean there will have been 7 years between Gears 5 and E-Day...

I've played tons of elder scrolls online and fallout 76. Great games if looking for an escape from life for awhile.

@themightyant Well...that's what happens when let the snake oil salesman, known as Todd Howard, be in control.

It just works!

@BAMozzy Rumor is, going to stress rumor, the Surface team is making the next Xbox and it will be like the Switch business model.

That may be what went down when Panos left the company to go to Amazon. Either he didn't want make it, or nadella said make it cheap and underpowered.

The latter I could absolutely believe as nadella is destroying Microsoft from within.

I didn't realize that Forza is so big. Crazy how many people are playing it.

@themightyant I also don’t see more people playing it with Elden and newer games being released in that genre

@Fiendish-Beaver yea, I'm aware of those polls. I find that absolutely wild. I'm in the minority here but I hardly rate Halo as a campaign experience at all. I've played each one (except for 5 which I skipped) but despite Master Chief being a cool character the stories just don't do it for me.

Halo is a multiplayer experience to me first and foremost. That's where the fun is but like a lot of modern trend chasing multiplayer experiences the bottom line comes before the fun. Halo Infinite has the most expansive cosmetics in the series but that's what 343 focused on. Get the shop updates out to fund Forge then get the Forgers to carry the game updates. No new additions to the sandbox like vehicles. Any guns were done to support HCS not the average Halo player.

So I guess the picture I'm painting is noone was happy. The fans of Halo who didn't get more story and the multiplayer crowd got a monkey paw'd experience.

I think switching to Unreal 5 is a smart move in attracting new talent to the series. The slipspace engine is still an iteration on the BLAM! engine though. Enough that Halo Infinite doesn't quite feel like classic Halo though. This is the biggest challenge we'll see going forward to Unreal 5, Halo has to feel like Halo. It had a vary specific physics engine which created so many of those Halo moments. As a developer I'm sure it was hell to work with though.

@themightyant Nah 14 million is excellent for a non-live service game that got zero expansions/major additions to draw in more people and, as mentioned above, is a brand new one-game franchise merely 9 months-old.

@themightyant >I did say Xbox would have wanted more considering Bethesda's status and pedigree.

Dude it's the most played Bethesda game ever and the only singleplayer game and new franchise to crack into 2023's Top 10 Most Played Games.

It is a roaring success for Bethesda on every level.

@BAMozzy I believe a handheld Xbox is inevitable. If Microsoft were to make a device leveraging their decades long partnership with AMD we could see a portable Xbox with the successor to the AMD Z1 Extreme APU which would make it more powerful than the current ROG Ally devices, while also being significantly more powerful than the Series S. The current Z1 Extreme with the Radeon 780m is about as powerful as an RTX3050 which is pretty damn remarkable for a handheld device. All Microsoft would have to do is make a device with a 1080p display (AMOLED or QLED) that has a refresh rate of at LEAST 120fps, make sure the console runs the AMD APU that's equivalent or better than the Z1 extreme with at least 16GB of LPDDR5X or LPDDR6 (releases later this year) along with a minimum storage capacity of 512GB SSD. These specs would ensure longevity, ease of backwards compatibility with existing Xbox games library & future proofs for the future Xbox consoles. If Xbox used Z1 extreme or modified version of the Z1 Extreme right now it would easily play most current gen Xbox games with a patch. If Xbox made the console with the Z1 successor we'd be looking at a portable Xbox that can run games natively with relative ease

A handheld Xbox console makes sense to me. It's a brilliant idea especially considering Xbox is so good with backwards compatibility having a handheld device that can play MOST of the digital Xbox games I own would be absolutely PHENOMENAL I'd purchase the console day one. Right now I use a Series S along with a 15inch portable gaming monitor to play my games when I'm away from home and it gets the job done surprisingly well but the idea of a dedicated handheld really resonates with the Xbox play anywhere mantra and even if the device was a carbon copy of the ROG Ally just with the Xbox OS and ecosystem I think it'd do EXTREMELY well.

The only reason I haven't gotten a ROG Ally for myself is the price and Windows OS. Xbox could make a carbon copy with updates of course plus Xbox OS and ecosystem, sell it for $400-$450 and I can honestly say people would LOVE it. A portable console powerful enough to play ALL Xbox games plus run all the apps & have access to the same Xbox ecosystem that has all their digital games, movies and apps on it that would be a massive selling point IMO.

Anyways TLDR I definitely agree with you on the Xbox handheld gaming console, it would be a massive hit no matter how you slice it.
Long Live Xbox, happy gaming ✌️

@themightyant 14 million is good for a single player game that's is not an excisting franchise, PlayStations flagship game spiderman 2 had only sold around 11 million

@Toot1st yet SM2 only released on ps5. And they sold all those copies too.

SF had Xbox, pc and released on a sub. A far wider reaching audience. Was billed as Bethesda’s game of the generation, Skyrim in space etc.

And that’s not to say 14million is terrible, but it’s probably lower than expected

@Ricky-Spanish

If Sony owned Gears, it would have gone the way of SOCOM, Resistence, MAG and Killzone; into the dumpster, along with many other great, forgotten Sony I.P.s. 😢

@EVIL-C You're probably right all I know is Microsoft don't realise the cash cow it could be E-Day should of been released already but at least it looks back to proper gears not whatever gears 5 was trying to be

These numbers mean absolutely nothing as none of these games were purchased at full price, or purchased at all!! They're all free on Gamepass and it's pretty obvious that Gamepass isn't making them the money they thought it would, hence the tier change coming and the price increase. Critical thinking required.

@themightyant 14 million for a single-player only game is amazing. Most of the other games on the list have some online feature.

@Ricky-Spanish Yeah I appreciate the return to the setting and atmosphere of the earlier games, as they were the best. 5 is the worst Gears title. So bland and... meh.

I'm surprised how low Minecraft is. My kid has it on at least 2 platforms themselves. It's telling that Halo Infinite, between Gamepass and F2P multi-player only hit 20 million.

@eduscxbox
Or you could think that at '14 million players' more than half of GP subscribers didnt even bother to try it for nothing.
It's done poorly and no amount of hand wringing nonsense can disguise that fact.
It's a major shame as I've previously liked that studios output, but it just wasn't good enough. I gave it 80 hours, but then uninstalled and would never go back.

@Titntin Sure, 14 million players is a bad number. By your logic BTS is also no a famous band as not everyone on spotify listen to them. Avengers was a bad movie because not everyone on the planet watched.

What kind of logic is that?! Not everyone played because not everyone likes rpg or space-themed games.

But I don't think logic can work with someone who just want to hate on the game.

It's amazing how some people can twist 14 million players into something negative for the sake of hate.

@eduscxbox I refer you to your own comment -"What kind of logic is that?"
You're making no sense at all- avengers films - wtf?

I clearly don't just want to hate on the game or I wouldn't have stated it was a major shame, or have spent 80 hours playing it.

Your clearly not making any sense at this point - if you wish to suggest that less than half of GP players trying your biggest release is somehow a huge win, then you go right ahead.
Any one capable of more critical analysis will clearly see this was not the huge hit that MS anticipated and hopefully use this experience to ensure their next games are received with more universal praise, which I would be happy to see.