Sea of Thieves Tops 5 Million Players.

[DonFerrari]

Azzanation said:

DonFerrari said:
Good number, but still waiting for the sales and concurrent players.

Probably should have invested your shares into gamepass rather than game sales for this game. MMOs arent about phyiscal numbers, you probably should have known that since 2004 when WoW launched.

Trials and gamerpass doesn't show if this particular game was succesfull or not.

MMOs numbers are individual.

Azzanation said:

V-r0cK said:

That's exactly what I was thinking.  For all we know, majority of the 5M players just demoed the game.

And just like when they announced Forza's 9M players it seems like MS is now trying to spin their news differently by announcing the amount of players 'logging into a game' then actual games sold.   

Sounds pretty sketched seeing as the majority of the Xbox division is about selling consoles and games but maybe MS is transitioning into the business of servicing customers rather than selling products?  Unless is this a normal thing that a lot of business are doing?  Does Sony include their PS Now members into their figures as well?  MS transitioning trying to become the Netflix of video games?  Now I'm really curious to know what's MS's plan for next gen.

Personally, when it comes selling products, there are only 2 types of numbers I feel that actually mean something:
1. The amount the game actually sold in store and digital because you know that people actually bought it.
2. (Only for games with campaign) The amount of people that actually finished the game by seeing how many achieved that achievement/trophy you get for completing the story.  Because then you know how many of them actually enjoyed it enough to play the entire game.  

The issue isn't with MS spinning there numbers. The real issue is with the industry not accepting the change. Something I have been saying for years. Actual HW doesn't make the bulk of the money anymore and even SW is becoming to a lesser affect.

Your first point I bolded is spot on. MS is transitioning into a Netflix system. That is obvious.

The 2nd part doesn't mean what it use to anymore. I was born in the 80s and lived though the 90s where physical sales meant everything. This day and age is completely different now. Gamers today when buying the physical copies still don't end up putting in the hours like many like to believe. I for one am one of them. I buy many Physical games because I am old school however I rarely touch the games after playing a couple hours of them due to the backlog of games I have, so I nit-pick what I want to invest my time into. So again the physical copies will never tell the true story any more, not like it use to. Today's industry needs to learn to understand that the old way of media is becoming less important yearly.

A good example is look at the movie industry. This day and age digital media is king. Just because a movie doesn't sell many Blu-Rays or DvDs anymore doesn't mean people haven't watched the movie via other means. Netflix/Foxtel is the movie industry now. That's where the money is, that's what MS is implementing into the gaming industry, they experimented with the XB1 and the XB2 will fully support this new means of gaming media. Just watch it explode into the next big thing next gen.

GamePass is very similar to Netflix, even if 1m of those 5m players subscribed to GamePass, that's $10m MS just made for that month just to play/Demo Sea Of Thieves. Now if 2m or 3m subscribe to GamePass to trail SoT or even State of Decay 2 etc than that's 20m or 30m there making that month just to trail a game or 2.. or many. Now round that out for the year and there's your fortune, physical media wont be bringing in that kind of money not anymore. Too many middle men want there fair share of selling the Disks. MS are just clearly cutting out the middle men. Its smart and it seems MS is in a very good spot to achieve this goal, with there Azure Cloud network, there foundation of the XB1 and there future proofing there gaming division with acquiring and making newer studios its looking good for them.

Is this a revival of the thread that asked the industry to change the definition of success to make MS selling less consoles than Nintendo and Sony more succesfull?