All purpose Sales and Sales Rumours and Anecdotes [2024 edition]

[Caayn]

I'm more surprised that It Takes Two and Need for speed Heat are in the top 10 games sold of february 2024

 

[Deleted member 2197]

April 3, 2024

PC Top 2023 Games a Decade Old on Average; PC Drove Growth in 2023, Console Will 2024 Onward

A snapshot of the PC and console gaming market in 2023 shows an industry battling against its own past successes.

wccftech.com

Market research and data tracking firm NewZoo has released their 2023 PC and Console Gaming Report, and it provides an interesting snapshot of an industry in a bit of a transitional mode. The gaming industry saw out-of-control growth during the pandemic, which fizzled a bit in 2022, but 2023 saw a return to modest growth with the PC/console market reaching $93.5 billion, up 2.3 percent year-on-year. This growth was largely driven by the PC market, which was up 3.9 percent year-on-year, while the console market was up 1.7 percent YoY. The PC market accounted for 43 percent of industry revenue, while consoles were 57 percent.
...
Interestingly, one of the challenges the industry faces going forward is its own past successes. Basically, every new game that comes out has to compete with existing live service behemoths like Fortnite, Roblox, and Minecraft. This is particularly true on PC, where the average age of 2023’s top 10 games in terms of monthly active users was a whopping 9.6 years. PlayStation and Xbox don’t fare all that much better, with their top 10s being 7.4 and 7.2 years old on average. Seemingly the only place people actually play new games is the Switch, which has two 2023 games in its top 5 (Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Super Mario Bros. Wonder) and an average age of 3.9 years for its top 10.
...
Overall, games over 6 years old accounted for over 60 percent of playtime in 2023. Even in cases where new games were being played, a lot of time went to annualized franchises like Call of Duty and EA’s various sports games. A mere 8 percent of play time went to entirely new, non-annualized games, with Diablo IV, Hogwarts Legacy, and Baldur’s Gate III topping the list.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Activision Blizzard boosts Microsoft earnings, but Xbox console sales plummet

Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard has contributed to a boost in gaming revenue, but Xbox console sales hav…

www.eurogamer.net

Hardware revenue, however, has decreased by 31 percent year-on-year due to poor sales of Xbox consoles. Even the release of major exclusive Starfield last year couldn't improve hardware sales.

It's a similar story to this time last year, when the company also reported a 30 percent drop in hardware revenue.

Series is therefore tracking well below Xbox One?

 

[chris1515]

Activision Blizzard boosts Microsoft earnings, but Xbox console sales plummet

Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard has contributed to a boost in gaming revenue, but Xbox console sales hav…

www.eurogamer.net

Series is therefore tracking well below Xbox One?

Yes this is below Xbox One.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Not much of a surprise really.

 

[eastmen]

Not much of a surprise really.

They really need to drop prices. I expect the S to drop at the june show case and maybe the x also.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Not much of a surprise really.

Really? I thought it'd at least maintain current momentum. Sales curve has peaked much earlier than other consoles, and reflects really badly that instead of growing their platform generation over generation, MS are in a taildive. Beginning of this gen we were looking at Series doing better than One and One being a bad gen, a bunch of painful mistakes that MS were recovering from. So this gen should be better than last, selling lockstep 2:1 behind PS5, but it's fumbling hard. And at this point, it'd take something extraordinary to turn that around and get significant growth again.

I don't think anyone was expecting this three years ago, so I'm not sure why this isn't surprising. Were you expecting MS's hardware sales to keep dropping?

 

[wco81]

Those numbers suggest that the hardware sales rate for the Xbox Series S/X may have already peaked in the last year or two. That would be historically early for a console of this type; previous Ars analyses have shown PlayStation consoles generally see their sales peaks in their fourth or fifth year of life, and Nintendo portables have shown a similar sales trend, historically. The Xbox Series S/X progression, on the other hand, looks more similar to that of the Wii U, which was already deep in a "death spiral" at a similar point in its commercial life.

This is not the end​

In the past, console sales trends like these would have been the sign of a hardware maker's wider struggles to stay afloat in the gaming business. However, in today's gaming market, Microsoft is in a place where console sales are not strictly required for overall success.

For instance, Microsoft's total gaming revenue for the latest reported quarter was up 51 percent, thanks in large part to the "net impact from the Activision Blizzard acquisition." Even before that (very expensive) merger was completed, Microsoft's total gaming revenue was often partially buoyed by "growth in Game Pass" and strong "software content" sales across PC and other platforms.

Perhaps it's no surprise that Microsoft has shown increasing willingness to take some former Xbox console exclusives to other platforms in recent months. In fact, following the Activision/Blizzard merger, Microsoft is now publishing more top-sellers on the PS5 than Sony. And let's not forget the PC market, where Microsoft continues to sell millions of games above and beyond its PC Game Pass subscription business.

So, while the commercial future of Xbox hardware may look a bit uncertain, the future of Microsoft's overall gaming business is in much less dire straits. That would be true even if Microsoft's Xbox hardware revenue fell by 100 percent.

Perhaps it's no surprise that Microsoft has shown increasing willingness to take some former Xbox console exclusives to other platforms in recent months. In fact, following the Activision/Blizzard merger, Microsoft is now publishing more top-sellers on the PS5 than Sony. And let's not forget the PC market, where Microsoft continues to sell millions of games above and beyond its PC Game Pass subscription business.
So, while the commercial future of Xbox hardware may look a bit uncertain, the future of Microsoft's overall gaming business is in much less dire straits. That would be true even if Microsoft's Xbox hardware revenue fell by 100 percent.

Putting Microsoft’s cratering Xbox console sales in context

Why declining quarterly numbers might not be awful news for Microsoft’s gaming business.

arstechnica.com

So hardware sales down, overall gaming revenues down but Gamepass and Activision games revenues prevent overall games revenues from dropping as much as they otherwise would have.

Good thing MSFT is riding the AI hype.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So hardware sales down, overall gaming revenues down but Gamepass and Activision games revenues prevent overall games revenues from dropping as much as they otherwise would have.

The Activision income is a silly metric. I mean, of course it was going to increase MS's revenue by the addition of AB's revenue. Buying more revenue has a tendency to do that. You can keep buying more and more companies to get more and more revenue...until you go bust. The impact of AB should be ignored for comparisons with previous years, and then factored in in subsequent years for how MS are managing to monetise that acquisition, though I appreciate investors have their own brand of logic.

Gamepass remains a mystery - MS's declined to share sub numbers this time around. Is there a clearly figure? MS's summary says, "Xbox content and services revenue increased 3% driven by growth in Xbox Game Pass." Three percent could be a few hot items rather than platform growth.

Also, Ars used all the wrong colours for their graph!

 

[QPlayer]

2025 is the time for the new Xbox.

 

[iroboto]

The Activision income is a silly metric. I mean, of course it was going to increase MS's revenue by the addition of AB's revenue. Buying more revenue has a tendency to do that. You can keep buying more and more companies to get more and more revenue...until you go bust. The impact of AB should be ignored for comparisons with previous years, and then factored in in subsequent years for how MS are managing to monetise that acquisition, though I appreciate investors have their own brand of logic.

Gamepass remains a mystery - MS's declined to share sub numbers this time around. Is there a clearly figure? MS's summary says, "Xbox content and services revenue increased 3% driven by growth in Xbox Game Pass." Three percent could be a few hot items rather than platform growth.

Also, Ars used all the wrong colours for their graph!

That doesn’t make any sense. Revenue is revenue, from a business perspective they bought a user base and growth and revenue with it. Earlier people were talking about “pay back” in the ABK acquisition threads saying it would never be worth it. Now that they own it we should disregard its value?

Can’t have it both ways. 68B was paid to grow their revenue to where it is now.

This is the difference between business and platform strategies versus gamers just buying video games In a standard model. The traditional model is dead and everyone knows it. MS is free to change the model they see fit to grow their business. We can’t just discount it.

 

[chris1515]

Putting Microsoft’s cratering Xbox console sales in context

Why declining quarterly numbers might not be awful news for Microsoft’s gaming business.

arstechnica.com

So hardware sales down, overall gaming revenues down but Gamepass and Activision games revenues prevent overall games revenues from dropping as much as they otherwise would have.

Good thing MSFT is riding the AI hype.

For the first time they did not talk about Gamepass growth, it was probably down too. Like the playstation plus it reached a ceiling.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1783635938796540380

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That doesn’t make any sense. Revenue is revenue, from a business perspective they bought a user base and growth and revenue with it. Earlier people were talking about “pay back” in the ABK acquisition threads saying it would never be worth it. Now that they own it we should disregard its value?

Can’t have it both ways. 68B was paid to grow their revenue to where it is now.

It is what it is and I acknowledged that, but it's still silly. You can conceptually keep increasing revenue by getting more and more into debt buying companies, until your revenue growth is 500% and your debt is Chapter 11. Obviously in the case MS had the cash lying around, but the revenue growth here is not the same as, say, Nintendo's 10% revenue growth for 2023 which was achieved leveraging their existing assets. And it's not the same as all the other MS revenue reports where acquisition of a studio hasn't brought with it ongoing revenues from GaaS.

I get it's finance and how these things are done, but that figure of 50% growth is kinda meaningless in terms of understanding the Xbox business. It just shows MS bought in more revenue; for all we know the other XB divisions have shrunk 50% and this overall growth is just from a huge uptick. We won't be able to make sense of the performance of the whole division under its new structure until next year to compare to this year.

Edit: I'll try to illustrate this a bit better. If Sony reports 12% revenue growth YoY, we know that's because they've sold 12% more hardware and/or games. If Nintendo reports the same, we know it's from the same. In this case, the revenue growth does not come from selling more hardware or software, but folding in the existing revenue from ABK. And we don't know what that revenue is in comparison to how ABK did last year. So potentially, you could have MS Gaming down 10%, and ABK down 10%, but rolled into one figure it comes out at 50% up for MS gaming. We don't know what's actually growing or not. We're left clueless (unless there are more details in the financials that these articles haven't touched upon, but I don't expect MS to break down the numbers to something we can follow because they don't).

 

[wco81]

Did MS pay cash or use their stock to acquire Activision.

I guess either way Kotick and other Activision insiders, who were revealed as vermin, are getting richer and richer.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

I don't think anyone was expecting this three years ago, so I'm not sure why this isn't surprising. Were you expecting MS's hardware sales to keep dropping?

It's not surprising. We know what was going in Europe last Christmas. Either price drops and new amazing content turn sales around or this generation is going to be shorter than MS wanted, but they'll survive.

Last time they only sold 25 million units they had about 4 studios. Now they have 32. They'll be fine.

 

[iroboto]

It is what it is and I acknowledged that, but it's still silly. You can conceptually keep increasing revenue by getting more and more into debt buying companies, until your revenue growth is 500% and your debt is Chapter 11. Obviously in the case MS had the cash lying around, but the revenue growth here is not the same as, say, Nintendo's 10% revenue growth for 2023 which was achieved leveraging their existing assets. And it's not the same as all the other MS revenue reports where acquisition of a studio hasn't brought with it ongoing revenues from GaaS.

I get it's finance and how these things are done, but that figure of 50% growth is kinda meaningless in terms of understanding the Xbox business. It just shows MS bought in more revenue; for all we know the other XB divisions have shrunk 50% and this overall growth is just from a huge uptick. We won't be able to make sense of the performance of the whole division under its new structure until next year to compare to this year.

Edit: I'll try to illustrate this a bit better. If Sony reports 12% revenue growth YoY, we know that's because they've sold 12% more hardware and/or games. If Nintendo reports the same, we know it's from the same. In this case, the revenue growth does not come from selling more hardware or software, but folding in the existing revenue from ABK. And we don't know what that revenue is in comparison to how ABK did last year. So potentially, you could have MS Gaming down 10%, and ABK down 10%, but rolled into one figure it comes out at 50% up for MS gaming. We don't know what's actually growing or not. We're left clueless (unless there are more details in the financials that these articles haven't touched upon, but I don't expect MS to break down the numbers to something we can follow because they don't).

I guess that doesn’t register for me. They are all under 1 banner now, they all operate under Xbox management.

It’s like a football team that’s struggling, suddenly makes some trades (expensive ones) and suddenly the team is doing better than before. We don’t need to figure or separate the players we traded for to understand how the rest of the team is doing performing. In doing so you defeat the purpose of trading for these players. We trade for players to make the team win, And we need the team to get them better integrated for further success.

We should be looking at the number as a whole now, separation isn’t necessary.

 

[iroboto]

It is what it is and I acknowledged that, but it's still silly. You can conceptually keep increasing revenue by getting more and more into debt buying companies, until your revenue growth is 500% and your debt is Chapter 11. Obviously in the case MS had the cash lying around, but the revenue growth here is not the same as, say, Nintendo's 10% revenue growth for 2023 which was achieved leveraging their existing assets. And it's not the same as all the other MS revenue reports where acquisition of a studio hasn't brought with it ongoing revenues from GaaS.

I get it's finance and how these things are done, but that figure of 50% growth is kinda meaningless in terms of understanding the Xbox business. It just shows MS bought in more revenue; for all we know the other XB divisions have shrunk 50% and this overall growth is just from a huge uptick. We won't be able to make sense of the performance of the whole division under its new structure until next year to compare to this year.

Edit: I'll try to illustrate this a bit better. If Sony reports 12% revenue growth YoY, we know that's because they've sold 12% more hardware and/or games. If Nintendo reports the same, we know it's from the same. In this case, the revenue growth does not come from selling more hardware or software, but folding in the existing revenue from ABK. And we don't know what that revenue is in comparison to how ABK did last year. So potentially, you could have MS Gaming down 10%, and ABK down 10%, but rolled into one figure it comes out at 50% up for MS gaming. We don't know what's actually growing or not. We're left clueless (unless there are more details in the financials that these articles haven't touched upon, but I don't expect MS to break down the numbers to something we can follow because they don't).

I guess that doesn’t register for me. They are all under 1 banner now, they all operate under Xbox management.

It’s like a football team that’s struggling, suddenly makes some trades (expensive ones) and suddenly the team is doing better than before. We don’t need to figure or separate the players we traded for to understand how the rest of the team is doing performing. In doing so you defeat the purpose of trading for these players. We trade for players to make the team win, And we need the team to get them better integrated for further

We should be looking at the number as a whole now, separation isn’t necessary. Nothing is ever entirely in isolation. As soon as they owned ABK, the effects of that merger had direct and indirect effects on the whole business; it has had effects on the whole industry.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

We don’t need to figure or separate the players we traded for to understand how the rest of the team is doing performing. In doing so you defeat the purpose of trading for these players. We trade for players to make the team win, And we need the team to get them better integrated for further success.

We should be looking at the number as a whole now, separation isn’t necessary.

I disagree. I bet while the team is now doing better, the coach is tracking individual players and seeing those who are doing worse with a view to replacing them. Likewise, analysis of the players after the transfer will compare their performance with the new team versus the old. Sure, the new team is doing better, but this player is not managing the plays he used to.

Is ABK performing better or worse than it was last year? Is XB performing better or worse overall? And how much so?

I won't say this is the only perspective, but it strikes me as a necessary component to understand how the business is operating this year versus last. The sports analogy doesn't quite work here. It'd be more like buying players and those players coming with league points. We were 7 points, bottom of the table. We bought four expensive players who each came with 4 points. Now we have 19 points, mid table. Look how great the team is doing! Only, perhaps it still can't play for toffee and these players are going to worse and worse at this club?

That whole team performance you want to look at, what matters in the long run, can't be compared or understood until the whole team has been together for a year to compare performance this year versus last. When we look at the gaming division's revenue next year, we'll get an idea of that. But this 50% figure tells us very little.

 

[chris1515]

I disagree. I bet while the team is now doing better, the coach is tracking individual players and seeing those who are doing worse with a view to replacing them. Likewise, analysis of the players after the transfer will compare their performance with the new team versus the old. Sure, the new team is doing better, but this player is not managing the plays he used to.

Is ABK performing better or worse than it was last year? Is XB performing better or worse overall? And how much so?

I won't say this is the only perspective, but it strikes me as a necessary component to understand how the business is operating this year versus last. The sports analogy doesn't quite work here. It'd be more like buying players and those players coming with league points. We were 7 points, bottom of the table. We bought four expensive players who each came with 4 points. Now we have 19 points, mid table. Look how great the team is doing! Only, perhaps it still can't play for toffee and these players are going to worse and worse at this club?

That whole team performance you want to look at, what matters in the long run, can't be compared or understood until the whole team has been together for a year to compare performance this year versus last. When we look at the gaming division's revenue next year, we'll get an idea of that. But this 50% figure tells us very little.

Activision Blizzard is down 17% compared to last year but this is not Microsoft fault...

 

[iroboto]

That whole team performance you want to look at, what matters in the long run, can't be compared or understood until the whole team has been together for a year to compare performance this year versus last. When we look at the gaming division's revenue next year, we'll get an idea of that. But this 50% figure tells us very little.

Each quarter you’re required to generate revenue, so you’re not buying banked league points. You’re still earning it for that quarter. That being said if you agree that 2025s numbers should be compared to 2024s numbers to understand what’s happening holistically then think it’s rather unfair to do.

We would then discount all growth during covid because that will never happen again, even Sony had to adjust their units down.

Continuing, we as well would ignore the current Fallout sales blip, because that was driven by investment into a TV show.

what if the same 68B dollars was driven into marketing, TV shows, and building titles, and they moved up to 50% more revenue? Should we discount it because they spent 68B to drive it?

We know that more spending correlates to more growth. But If the answer is no, then we’re only having a debate of how that 68B was spent. One method is clearly more risk free and sustainable profits generated, over another which could be a one time blip and everything falling back to normal values following.

Any shareholder would want the purchase; it generates guaranteed revenue likely for decades to come. Going on an expansion and marketing blitz doesn’t.

If did spend 68B to expand and market, the headlines would have been the same. Xbox revenue up 50 points is deceptive, because they spent 68B to do so. Now they are in the hole so bad, it’s impossible to sustain spending like this to generate revenue. Xbox is done!