Death Stranding has undoubtedly been a hit ever since it arrived on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S late last year, but unfortunately, there's no sign of Death Stranding 2 coming to Xbox alongside its PS5 launch on June 26th.
The release of the first game definitely seems to have been beneficial for the sequel though. It's been pointed out today that 20 million players have tried Death Stranding since its launch, and Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad advised that it had only sold 5 million copies on PS4 initially, so its audience has grown a lot over time.
Daniel Ahmad on social media: Worth noting that the game had sold less than 5m copies prior to the PC, PS+, PS5, Series X|S, Mac releases.
Making the game more accessible has led to 20m+ players experiencing the IP prior to the launch of its sequel that will require players to own a PS5 to play at launch.
Now, obviously this doesn't tell us exactly how many copies have been sold on Xbox - many of these players will have been on PC and PS5, and don't forget it's been on PC Game Pass and PlayStation Plus as well - but what it does show is that making games more accessible can lead to huge benefits when a sequel rolls around.
With Death Stranding 2 on the horizon, there are now over 20 million players who might be considering picking it up on PS5 this June, and some of them definitely will have been playing the first game on Xbox consoles in recent months.
It's evident that Sony is not keen to follow Xbox's path in making first-party games available on rival consoles, but could that change at some point? If Xbox achieves huge success with the likes of Halo, Gears, Forza and much more, we may be looking at a future where permanent console exclusives struggle to thrive amidst an ever-changing industry.
What are your thoughts on this? Let us know down in the comments section below.
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I don't see Sony ever pushing PS studios games on Xbox consoles, but games they published and didn't develop 1st party (Stellar Blade, Rise of the Ronin etc.) make a lot of sense.
Money talks. Over the next couple of years, Microsoft is going to make ENORMOUS profits from their new strategy, and 3rd party publishers will become more and more unwilling to restrict their games to one box. Sony will follow the money, but they'll do it at their own pace.
It was flat out free to keep on epic games store last year too.
I would like to see xbox put it's games on Epic and GOG like playstation does. Those are some pretty big storefronts to skip when your messaging is play anywhere. (GOG would obviously take a change in DRM policy)
@armondo36 Sony are ALREADY seeing record profits without having to change their strategy. The difference is Microsoft need to.
If Microsoft gets HUGE sales on PlayStation thanks to going 3rd party, Sony will still pocket 30% for everything sold on the console. With the fact that they would not sell massively on Xbox thanks to the Gamepass culture, they will get just as much money from Microsoft releasing games on PlayStation than releasing games on Xbox themselves.
Floodgates have opened for Ps5 games, before the end of the year we might see Playstation games coming day 1 to Xbox and probably on gamepass too! It just makes sense for Sony businesswise.
Sony is more likely to put games on Switch/Switch 2 (mainly Japan Studio games) albeit indirectly. Clearly they don’t see Nintendo as competition and they’re even working together (Zelda movie), but Sony sees Microsoft as competition. I honestly don’t think Sony needs to put games on Xbox for a long time.
@themightyant people dont understand that Sony is actively stealing and getting more of xbox share anyways. They dont need to port anything. A good chunk of xboxers will come to them eventually so sony will get 100% revenues for all their purchases anyways.
Console players en masse just dont want PC in any form. Next gen buying a traditional xbox (SX successor if it happens) is a big gamble as position will be way shakier than series gen is today unfortunately.
Not only push to 0 exclusives but MS marketing against console and not restocking consoles worldwide I think does a lot of damage
@Camble_Refuge problems is people migrating from xbox to other platforms including sony. So their share will grow regardless. PS5 is posied to surpass PS4 which was very strong gen overall
@anoyonmus Indeed. Basically everyone is in their own niche: PC and switch. They only direct competitors are PS and Xbox but seems like xbox wants out. Sony doesnt need to port anything as good chunk of xboxers who dont want PC next gen will go to Sony.
If I were Sony, I would rather finish off xbox and be a monopoly in an powerful under TV home console market
@armondo36 Problem is, their strategy makes their console pointless. Less and less people will buy them and it makes less sense for 3rd party devs to bother with a port at all.
@Onlyboxmatters Absolute zero chance of that happening. Ever!
@themightyant Yeah, because shareholders are famous for saying "that's enough money thanks". Sony are already licensing out their IP to other companies and releasing games for other systems. They are already a third party publisher and will continue to release more and more games on other platforms.
@TheGameThrifter insert WIN32 and take away X86 which is what Xbox is doing and no 3rd party games are missing cause they are already made. It’s called PC software. Hence the direction of the next Xbox.
@SMJ The big difference is PlayStation doesn’t make most of their money from publishing, they make most of their money from taking 30% of all the other publishers games on PSN. They keep making money by drawing players to PlayStation, and the best way to do that is exclusives.
Yes you will some see Sony games go multiplatform Day 1 when it makes sense (especially live services) but those will be the exception for years to come.
Said it before and I'll say it again, this game nor its creator have never enticed me in the slightest.
@Coletrain I'm not sure about that. If the next gen Xbox is just a hybrid PC that allows Steam or other 3rd party store fronts. What's stopping Sony from making their own store to make 100% of revenue off of Xbox users.
@HonestHick Xbox currently supports C++ & the Win32 api. The only difference is that it uses the Universal Windows Platform code to bundle it into a single modern installation method. Where Win32 tends to integrate into what part of the Windows OS it requires. So needs the system control panel to uninstall each component.
@cragis0001 long-term absolutely nothing bud. I don't expect them to do that though, because having a Sony launcher just to maintain a handful of games when it's been proven that they're vulnerable to PSN attacks on a console seems like a pointless money pit. Plus potential for modding, pirating etc.
I probably meant a bit more short-term, like it would be a good idea to multiplat those games soon, but I don't expect them to do it. They're much more protective (petty?) when it comes to their own publications
There was a rumor a bit back that Sony was working on a PC launcher. If it true or not that's different story. But it's one way to support Xbox users while not giving Microsoft cash in return.
Aye after the Switch 2 announcement I'd suspect they'll see Nintendo as more of a threat than Xbox. But like you say Sony can be petty in there decision making.
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