Phil Spencer on line 1. Your reaction?

[The Real Fragamemnon]

I'll 1st assume he is not thrilled about 3 million players report. Even 3 million units sold is not a good sales figure in 2025 for a self-proclaimed AAA studio. I'd rather get a call from my wife's divorce lawyer than a call from Phil after this flop.

[Spectrum Fox]

What a weird post.

[alex010300]

Well the game is doing better than starfield, which is good enough for him. His main focus would be Fallout because of the Fallout TV show.

[VhagarTheLastOne]

Theres over 100+ mill player on Earth, 3 mill is pathetic. Thats why I beleive they are switching to submodel, tbh.

[talloyer]

I would tell him:

"PHIL, past time to reestructure id Software to merely serve as a support studio and a strictly developer of id Tech, nothign more. And make Marty Stratton and Hugo Martin your top priorities to layoff! you are welcome, bye!"

[Gabi]

So the thing is, we are basing this on a past models for sucess, which Microsoft has moved away from. That is game unit sales isn't what Microsoft primarily cares about. What they are interested in for better or worse is inciting players into paying for a subscription in an ongoing manner.

The metrics for which is more complex then how many players, it includes how much they played it, how much that and other factors is likely to lead them to stay paying for the subscription month on month.

All of which we just don't have the data for. What we do know is Microsoft is making money on gamepass so there model does work. The question is can it be sustained, people said the same thing being said about gamepass regarding netflix in its early streaming days yet here we are.

Microsoft is clearly planning for a gaming landscape that is very different to the one we are in. I'm not convinced that is better or worse for the industry or indeed for Microsoft, but there hand was forced by the underperformance of the xbox one, and that being followed up by the series consoles doing even worse.