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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - Sea of Thieves Tops 5 Million Players.

DonFerrari on 02 August 2018
Azzanation said:

DonFerrari said:

We don't know the breakdown so no one can claim one way or another. And this isn't 5M concurrent users. So considering 30+M of Xbox owners have free trial, many may have tested SoT without bringing revenue to MS.

If the concurrent number was really high they probably would say it.

See my first post here, saying the 5M is a good number, but I would like to see sales or concurrent for it.

We wont know and MS have no interests in telling anyone. There business model is pro digital and online and play anywhere. We can say that SoT gamers are Gold Members and 5m different accounts to play a game is still a lot.

Come and go gamers maybe but I wouldn't say majority would sign up for GamePass just to unsubscribe over one game. SoT brings them in and other games keep them to stay. Its a smart business model.

As for how many games it actually sold? Well I have been logging in the past few days and I see players everywhere. To me that's more important that actual sales that doesn't add to the community.

They being pro digital doesn't make the concurrent players irrelevant.

Most SoT probably have Gold (and Gold is probably over 15M users anyway, which would make at least the interest in SoT high considering the userbase for it).

And I didn't say people only subscribed to see one game, but that there may be a lot of testers who downloaded it and a lot of other games.

You have the game, check your achievements for things that take at least 10h to get or 20h and tell us how many percent got it and we may have an idea of how many people played it significantly.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

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Azzanation on 02 August 2018
DonFerrari said:
Azzanation said:

We wont know and MS have no interests in telling anyone. There business model is pro digital and online and play anywhere. We can say that SoT gamers are Gold Members and 5m different accounts to play a game is still a lot.

Come and go gamers maybe but I wouldn't say majority would sign up for GamePass just to unsubscribe over one game. SoT brings them in and other games keep them to stay. Its a smart business model.

As for how many games it actually sold? Well I have been logging in the past few days and I see players everywhere. To me that's more important that actual sales that doesn't add to the community.

They being pro digital doesn't make the concurrent players irrelevant.

Most SoT probably have Gold (and Gold is probably over 15M users anyway, which would make at least the interest in SoT high considering the userbase for it).

And I didn't say people only subscribed to see one game, but that there may be a lot of testers who downloaded it and a lot of other games.

You have the game, check your achievements for things that take at least 10h to get or 20h and tell us how many percent got it and we may have an idea of how many people played it significantly.

That's all up to MS if they want to disclose Concurrent users.. Not every one will disclose these numbers. That's up to the business. 

Sea Of Thieves right now is having a huge flux of players jumping in due to the new expansion so its only getting better as we speak and a lot are saying positive things about it now.

I also heard rumours that GamePass have over 2m subscribers. Now that's just a rumour but I wouldn't be surprised since we are talking about a console close to 40m sold with a heavy focus on digital content. 

Lets look at the numbers

GamePass $10 Monthly - Live Gold $60 Yearly

If what I am calculating is true than that's $20m a month MS might be making in the dark, if that maintains to a full year than that's $240m they made just in GamePass alone with only 2m subs. Add that to (Lets estimate) 10m Live Gold Members, that's another $600m there making on Live yearly. That is $840m MS is making just on there services alone. Now you can see why MS are one of the richest brands in the world and Xbox is quite healthy behind the scenes. And remember they have been running Gold Live for over a Decade. 

Games like SoT's benefit these services. That's the model MS seem to be going for and that's why physical sales don't matter to them anymore.



Azzanation on 02 August 2018
CGI-Quality said:
⚠️

Don and Azzanation - Often times, you two go back and forth and we have reports to clean up as a result. The best way to fix that is for you guys to stop replying to one another. If you must continue discussing things, take it to PMs.

Understood.



Manlytears on 02 August 2018
Azzanation said:

DonFerrari said:

 Gamepass already existed before SoT so SoT having good numbers because of it (and we can't even pin point how many just signed in the month for any reason, played the game and left) doesn't mean SoT is the cause. But we do know you have issues with cause and consequence.

I guess there are people still waiting for your reply on the MS FY thread.

You did. When you pointed that success was subscription and that MS with less than half HW sold had about equal subs to PS+ (but you sure never got over the fact that their subs were gold+silver+ms+switch minecraft).

You know GamePass is a monthly subscription correct? You also know Sea Of Thieves requires Live Gold membership as well correct? (Not sure with PC) and both have been out for months so those free trails cant all be come and go gamers. So even (if) many used GamePass as a free trial to play SoTs, those so called gamers have to be subbed to Gold so either way its money.. unless you are claiming that majority of those 5m players are PC gamers which you probably will, wont surprise me. Than we have a first with a Win10 game outsells Console version..

SoTs seems to be delivering to Xbox's ecosystem by advertising Gold and also advertising GamePass. MS make money either way you see it. Something you seem to hate to admit.

5m players is a very good number for those who even just demoing the game. Maybe you need to start realising this method. Xbox doesn't need to rely on physical sales to make money and if you think MS isn't making much on Gold members than answer me this, Why did Sony and soon to be Nintendo copy the exact same methods of a paid subscription model? Keep an eye out and watch Sony copy MS's method of GamePass in the near future.

Just like Blizzard who don't announce how much they make on there subscribers, much like the majority of digital sales in general. These numbers, companies like to keep close to there chest. Don't ask me why. 

As for your 2nd your part of your post, I am not interested in debating with you about another threads debate which I clearly claimed I am done with.

First, you don't need to pay for gold on pc. If you got game pass trial you played for free.

Now Just few things

What if i already have gold and just jumped in Gamepass free trial? I mean, if we think that we have like 15M-20M gold members (prior to SoT lauch) and just like 2.5-3.5M*  goldmembers played sea of thieves on xbox,  Where Is The "SoT advertising Gold"? These numbers demonstarte that ther e is a huge chance that majority of the guys playing SoT most likely already had Gold.

in clonclusion, unless microsoft talks about a spike in gold members, it's hard to belive we SoT cause great impact in gold.

About gamepass success, i can say nothing about. Ms is making very aggressive moves to promote the thing, like $1 dollar service, free trial, day 1 fisrt party games, etc. It's verybsoon to say if things are working or not.

 

edut: sorry for my bad english, also since the discussion got a "soft mod" it's better to end the talk.

Last edited by Manlytears - on 02 August 2018

pokoko on 02 August 2018

When did the question of how SoT is doing become about how Gamepass is doing, then about how Xbox Live is doing? The implication seems to be that it doesn't matter as long as Microsoft is making money, which simply isn't true. Microsoft certainly cares, I assure you, or else they wouldn't have cancelled other projects.

Microsoft games still have budgets and goals.

None of which is to say that SoT isn't doing well or that it isn't contributing to the success of Gamepass, it's just that trying to obscure things behind the success of the overall brand isn't very conducive toward understanding the individual elements themselves.

Of course, we probably are looking at a situation similar to Sony's philosophy, where they are quite willing to take some losses on software as long as those titles contribute to the desirability of the platform. That's an easier situation to analyse, however. With Gamepass, we're looking at a LOT of developers and publishers who need to get paid, which complicates matters greatly. We just don't know what kind of metrics Microsoft is looking for and they certainly aren't going to tell us.



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barneystinson69 on 02 August 2018
jason1637 said:
barneystinson69 said:

Good to hear, though I doubt actually sales are even in 7 digits. But gamepass makes Microsoft $$$ either way, so win win I guess.

VGC has it at over 500k and ZhugeEX mentioned that the majority of SoT sales are digital and it's MS fastest selling new IP this gen so it definitely should be between 1-2 million.

Good to hear then. Hopefully Rare can continue to do well and make some awesome games in the future.



Made a bet with LipeJJ and HylianYoshi that the XB1 will reach 30 million before Wii U reaches 15 million. Loser has to get avatar picked by winner for 6 months (or if I lose, either 6 months avatar control for both Lipe and Hylian, or my patrick avatar comes back forever).

starcraft on 02 August 2018
Replicant said:
starcraft said:
Also, I recognise that there are a number of people genuinely curious as to the number of hard and digital copies of SoT actually sold - as am I.

But there is also a lot of people clearly just hoping to dump on MS by suggesting the majority of players played it on Gamepass. What those people don't seem to be thinking through, is the fact that would mean Gamepass has millions of active subscribers - which would make it one of the most successful new product launches in recent gaming history as a source of ongoing revenue.

Not to downplay or anything but free Gamepass trials are available no matter when you start it. A Gamepass user included in the stats is not necessarily a paying Gamepass user. All 38 million XB1 owners have access to a free Gamepass trial.

No matter what, Sea of Thieves reaching 5 million players is great news.

I'll keep longing for solid numbers to return to this industry though. I don't like all the secrecy and vague PR talk. Of course focussing solely on actual sales numbers doesn't make sense when we talk about games such as Fortnite (free to play) and Sea of Thieves (games as a service).

Here, frequent updates on the amount of concurrent players would tell us more about a game's continued health and long term success. Unfortunately, we don't get numbers on concurrent players either.

Pokémon Go has reached almost 1 billion players but that doesn't tell us much about its current active users (now under 5 million daily).

Thats true and a fair point. But I, for example, used mine to play Rise of the Tomb Raider.

People arguing that everyone is playing SoT not just on Gamepass, but on a free trial, are typically the same ones arguing that SoT is a bad game. Pretty hard to imagine why everyone would save up their free trial to play a 'bad' game instead of using it to play any of the many great games on Gamepass.

I agree though, would be nice if industry standard was just to hand out solid numbers.



starcraft - Playing Games = FUN, Talking about Games = SERIOUS