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[Flabagast]

[Thread created out of initial post in European Sales chart]

We have several indications that Xbox series sales since Septembre have taken a nosedive, specially in Europe, contrary to earlier pronostic that this year would be finally time for it to raise in charts due to the launch of its biggest exclusive yet since the beginning of the gen.

Now follow me on this hypothesis : After having been marketed as a serious candidate for GOTG by Bethesda, MS and Xbox fans, could it be possible that Starfield was so much a disappointment that it discouraged potential buyers on the fence to choose an Xbox, and led them to purchase a PS5 instead or to hold further their purchase decision ?

And in the end, the polemic question should be asked : could it be true that Xbox sales this fall would have been higher, had Starfield not released and led people to put a final nail on the coffin of their Xbox purchase decision ? Or did it help to mitigate the impact, which would mean that Xbox sales trajectory would have been even worse without it ? Do other, stronger market factors come into play and this collapse in charts has nothing to do with Starfield ? Those are certainly pending question being asked within Xbox HQ right now, so please discuss.

NB: This question is not about sales of the game in itself or level of engagement, but purely on the impact of its release to attract (or not) new buyers of the console.

 

[Kilau]

Starfield didn’t sway anyone away from buying an Xbox, just from buying Starfield.

 

[GHG]

It was Redfall that did the brand damage this year, not Starfield.

 

[RoboFu]

A few facts for you.

1. The world isn’t the UK.
2. It doesn’t account for digital or game pass
3. I do not own any solid black sock at this time.
4. American cheese isn’t inherently yellow.

 

[damidu]

it probably hurt ES6 more than it helped xbox. cemented the fact that they'll try to get away with skinning the same game for eternity
hype is small and deflating

 

[Roxkis_ii]

lmao! An anti-system seller is hilarious!
I don't think Starfield moved the needle for xbox one way or another.

 

[Crayon]

Nah. It was massively built up and dissapointed. But a lot of people still liked it. Not a terribly unusual situation for a big game. Especially an unkown ip. I think it could have been a bump if it was really good but there are a lot of scathing takes on youtube despite the acceptable meta score.

 

[SHA]

No, Xbox One syndrome still in effect, I think the strengths or weaknesses on either sides to resolve what they did is when Sony get outnumbered in contents and their ips start to lack it's identity, cause it's already happening.

 

[mdkirby]

No. Silly premise. I do not like starfield. I was and continue to be very disappointed by it. But many people will 100% have bought an xbox for it and/or signed upto gamespass. I would be shocked if it’s anywhere near commensurate with the dev costs tho. But to think people actively decided NOT to buy an xbox based on that is just dumb.

Xbox sales have been steadily declining. Regionally. Starfield simply didn’t yield a sufficient bumb to counter broader trends.

 

[rofif]

nah. didn't matter. nothing I can imagine will save xbox as a console now.

 

[lughnasadh123]

Do we have numbers for PC/console users? Reading past chatter makes me think it was the former that was a majority of buyers. Gamepass numbers would be interesting too.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

I get what OP is asking, but it's a difficult question to answer.

Would absolutely nothing have had a more positive impact? I don't think so. I think by default, that makes it positive, at least for the near term.

In the long term though, I think it proved that Microsoft can't compete. That was their best Sunday punch and it had no effect.

Brandwise, I think Starfield damaged Xbox more than Redfall, albeit it needed Redfall's help. It's cemented the narrative that they can't deliver on games. It cemented that narrative that they can't manage studios. I think everyone was willing to give Microsoft a pass on Redfall, but not Starfield.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Xbox was already trending downwards asymptotically. The release of Starfield had no effect, positive or negative. We're more than 3 years into the gen, one single game was never going to turn it around one way or the other at this point when trends are already established.

 

[Skifi28]

Starfield??? On my Xbox??? Ewww, selling it and getting a PS5.


Yup, sounds reasonable.

 

[Salty Popsicle]

Anyone who genuinely believed Starfield would move units similar in number to Elder Scrolls or Fallout was already giving the game no chance whatsoever. A new IP with absolutely no brand recognition outside of gaming circles and a dedicated hate/concern mob attacking the game since the very first mention of it being Xbox/PC exclusive didn't help either.

 

[Raonak]

I don't think it reduced sales. But it was absolutely positioned to be a system seller, and it definitely didn't do that.
It didn't do anything anything to stop the downward slide that xbox is going through.

To see another big xbox exclusive come out to middling reception is just continuing the bad pattern set since the kinect era.

 

[Varteras]

No. I'm pretty sure sales would have been even worse without it. Starfield might have fallen short of the expectations, but I can't imagine a scenario where that game, as it is, would cause people to not buy an Xbox.

The decline of Xbox sales would have almost certainly happened even if Starfield never came out. Again, it's probably the only reason it didn't happen sooner. The cause of Xbox's decline wasn't Starfield. It's because of how often Xbox has failed to successfully put out a game that Starfield was hoped to be.

 

[recursive]

A few facts for you.

1. The world isn’t the UK.
2. It doesn’t account for digital or game pass
3. I do not own any solid black sock at this time.
4. American cheese isn’t inherently yellow.

American cheese is fucking awesome.

 

[Salty Popsicle]

Brandwise, I think Starfield damaged Xbox more than Redfall, albeit it needed Redfall's help. It's cemented the narrative that they can't deliver on games. It cemented that narrative that they can't manage studios. I think everyone was willing to give Microsoft a pass on Redfall, but not Starfield.

Wait, are there people who actually believe the quality of the game would have been better had Bethesda/Zenimax not been acquired and the game released on PS5? Todd Howard is already on record as stating that the only reason the game didn't launch earlier in 2022 was because Microsoft pocketbook made it possible for the game to release outside of the Christmas Holiday season.

 

[Stare-Bear]

In many ways I found Starfield to be a step back in regards to exploration and gameplay. I loved Skyrim and could lose hours in it. Starfield just didn’t grab me. The fact they encourage you to fast travel everywhere breaks immersion a bit.

If it was released in 2011 it probably would’ve been a system seller. Now it was just a how far rpgs have come…

 

[Gambit2483]

Wtf is an anti-system seller?

 

[Kikorin]

Don't know, sure convinced me to not subscribe to Gamepass after all the negative reception. I'll wait for some patches and updates before jump in.

 

[Robb]

Eh.. It’s more exclusive content on their platform. It definitely had a positive impact, although seemingly not a very big one. Nothing that moved the needle.

 

[deriks]

The "videogame crash" happened, right?! Guess what, Europe and Japan didn't even knew what the hell was this back in the day. So regions are not a thing to really say that a thing is doomed or whatever

This drop sucks for Microsoft for sure, but hey, their market is on the US. It was since ever, and probably will ever be. In three years they're about 12 million in hardware sales, and they didn't expect much better than that. They're fine

 

[MiguelItUp]

Eh.. It’s more exclusive content on their platform. It definitely had a positive impact, although seemingly not a very big one. Nothing that moved the needle.

Yeah that's where I'm at. If anything, I'd agree that it had more of a positive impact than a negative one, because people checked it out and gave it a chance. The majority did regardless of what they read and heard. Realistically and worse come to worse, I too don't think it really "moved the needle" so to speak. It could've done a lot more good, but it didn't, and that's that.

 

[Hollowpoint5557]

This is weaponized autism levels of retarded.

 

[Salty Popsicle]

This is weaponized autism levels of retarded.

Expect nothing less from Gaf when it comes to exclusive games not on a Sony console.

 

[SenkiDala]

I think that basically the world is done with Xbox, sadly, too many mistakes too many lies in the last decade. Phil Spencer is responsable for most of this, every year saying "next year will be the biggest ever in gaming history" and then poof nothing happens, year after year, made that situation.

Outside of the US nobody cares about the Xbox, before it was only Japan that didn't care about Xbox, now all counters outside of the US don't buy those. During 3 weeks of Black Friday in France I saw Xbox Series S at 199/169 and nobody bought them.

I hope Xbox will be big again, for competition, to motivate Sony to keep trying to remain the bests, but I dunno... Maybe it's time for MS to pass on gaming and to let new challengers try.

And for the people thinking "but they spent so much money, they can't go back now", everything that they bought, they can resell them. They bought Nokia/resold, They bought Bungie/resold... Also they closed/stopped many of their very serious projects. HD DVD, Zune, Groove (competitor to Spotify etc), Mixer, Windows Phone.

The Gamepass, especially in the cloud, is their last chance.

 

[Flutta]

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Wait, are there people who actually believe the quality of the game would have been better had Bethesda/Zenimax not been acquired and the game released on PS5? Todd Howard is already on record as stating that the only reason the game didn't launch earlier in 2022 was because Microsoft pocketbook made it possible for the game to release outside of the Christmas Holiday season.

I definitely think the games would have been further delayed and though I haven't heard it, I wouldn't believe a thing Todd Howard says.

 

[adamsapple]

This is weaponized autism levels of retarded.

Nailed it.

 

[Mossybrew]

Yeah I had been thinking that if Starfield turned out to be a really great game, it could finally get me to buy an XBox this gen. Well, didn't turn out that way, guess it saved me some cash. And honestly at this point, it would take a really huge 10/10 exclusive to capture my interest, PS5 is just serving all of my needs. Maybe next gen, I mean I still have a lot of great memories of the og Xbox and 360, I don't have anything against Microsoft - just show me those exclusives that I can't live without and I'm in. Hasn't happened yet.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

Don't know, sure convinced me to not subscribe to Gamepass after all the negative reception. I'll wait for some patches and updates before jump in.

Big updates coming to the PC soon.

 

[winjer]

I think it did little to nothing to increase the sales of Series consoles.

 

[Elios83]

It failed to have any kind of positive effect on sales because it just wasn't a really good game but thinking that it was an anti-system seller seems absurd to me lol.
The negative impact is on Bethesda's reputation, are they ready to give up on their old engine and design something ambitious from scratch?

 

[Dacvak]

How much did Microsoft pay for Bethesda again? Because I’m sure a vast majority of that money was for the predicted sales and impact of Starfield.

Definitely a huge bummer for them. I’ve never liked most Bethesda games, personally, but Starfield seemed like it would be the first one to grab my attention. But I couldn’t even make it 6 hours in before I just had to stop out of boredom.

Makes me feel bad for the devs. I bet everyone thought this would be a massive contender for GOTY and probably their best game.

 

[Dacvak]

Okay I didn’t quite answer the question. Obviously if we’re talking about console sales, this had a positive impact. I find it highly unlikely that more people sold their Xboxes because of Starfield, versus buying one. I mean, duh.

So, yeah, stupid question.

I think the better question is whether or not Starfield (and Bethesda) has or will make a positive enough impact on Microsoft in the short and long term, compared to how much they’ve spent.

 

[Flabagast]

Okay I didn’t quite answer the question. Obviously if we’re talking about console sales, this had a positive impact. I find it highly unlikely that more people sold their Xboxes because of Starfield, versus buying one. I mean, duh.

So, yeah, stupid question.

I think the better question is whether or not Starfield (and Bethesda) has or will make a positive enough impact on Microsoft in the short and long term, compared to how much they’ve spent.

The question is not so much whether it made people sell their Xbox (of course that would seem absurd) but more if it made potential future buyers deciding not to purchase an Xbox Series while they were eventually considering it before the release (negative impact), and whether this amount of prospective non buyers is higher than those that bought an Xbox mainly for the game (positive impact).

In other words, I am talking purely of the impact on "gross customers additions", not "churned customers".

 

[Tsaki]

Starfield definitely boosted Xbox's sales. Boosting doesn't mean it gave them more sales than last year's but if not for it, the sales would be worse.
Starfield is a good game that got too much on its shoulders (by Microsoft and BGS), but it's not brand destructive.

 

[Astray]

It was Redfall that did the brand damage this year, not Starfield.

The 1st hit to Starfield's hype imo was that infamous Spencer interview (which will forever ring in infamy btw) where he says that Starfield won't move the needle even if it's a 11/10 game. That inherently told us that it won't be an 11/10 game. He wouldn't be saying this otherwise.

Also the reaction of the shill interviewers was fantastic, they were just utterly flabbergasted and constantly trying to get him to sunnier topics and he wasn't having any of it.

 

[Pelta88]

The game was hyped to the point where every XB shill on YT, had several vids claiming Starfield would contend for game of the generation.

It didn't just fail to meet those expectations. It was also lacklustre and quickly forgotten about. Once the narrative became "After 20+ hours the game gets good" gamers dismissed it outright. That aside, the state of XB is due to a leadership that is addicted to PR instead of publishing great games.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

You tell me.

 

[Astray]

Redfall is the true anti-system seller.

Their 1st big game from a beloved studio, also the 1st game they deemed worthy of a $70 price tag... And the result is a game that got ridiculed all year.

The doubts about Starfield started after Redfall released, especially once Spencer took to Kinda Funny.

 

[Ozzie666]

The game wasn't my cup of tea for sure, but it appeared to be a 7-8 game at best, which is totally fine. If not for unrealistic hype and expectations placed on the game, if not dubbed as the saviour after a game like refall, if not expected to carry the entire xbox brand with so few releases and quality products. Suffered abit like Crack Down 3. It's a bit silly to expect 1 game to turn around a consoles fortunes, it takes several strong efforts and follow-ups, momentum.

Definitely not an anti system seller, just needs help. It would have fit in well on PS5 lineup and probably sold very well. There would have still been the same drama and complaints though and the game would have eventually been exposed.

 

[Putonahappyface]

I was definitely caught up in the build up and hype for Starfield and was going to pull the trigger on an XBSX solely on this game, depending on how good the reviews were etc. I was underwhelmed with the released game, so sadly didn't buy an XBSX.

 

[digoutyoursoul]

The Xbox division itself is the anti system seller.

 

[Little Chicken]

The lengths people will go to in order to spread some fanboy drivel.

 

[RoboFu]

What was that thread about some weird dude calling out NeoGAF for crazy anti box threads? lol

 

[poppabk]

..... and quickly forgotten about.

So true, it for sure doesn't get brought up in almost every single thread on Neogaf.