Kyuu said:
Thank you for sharing Daniel Ahmed's post (I wasn't really aware of it). But your old information is misleading for the following reasons: 1. Playstation's digital ratios saw a rapid growth from 37% in FY2018 (coinciding with the date of Daniel's post) to 65% in FY2020 (79% in Q4). So unless you have an evidence that Xbox had a similar growth and kept the advantage (which we didn't even know how big it was exactly) this evidence doesn't amount to much. Physical numbers are onesided as hell while digital is guesswork. |
1. Why would you expect Xbox to NOT have a similar rapid growth of digital sales? The entire industry is moving towards digital, and there is absolutely no reason to believe that this momentum towards digital would have suddenly slowed or stopped only for Xbox in 2018-2020. Xbox has been at the forefront of pushing digital: Xbox Play Anywhere (buy a game once and own it across Xbox, PC and soon Xcloud - only for digital games), the first manufacturer to produce a digital-only console, Game Pass, the Microsoft Rewards program that gives credit for game purchases (only for digital purchases), Quick Resume (digital games only), promotion of digital game sales at retailers like Wal-Mart and Best Buy, and XCloud. And of course, the pandemic, which has accelerated the shift to digital for everyone.
2. Once someone makes the switch to digital, they are likely to stay digital. The shift to digital has been onesided; the average customer goes from physical -> digital, not digital -> physical. Also, funny you mentioned RE8 and Nier: Replicant because the Microsoft Rewards program I mentioned earlier actually did have special deals for those games (it only applied to digital purchases, of course)
From their Q3 2021 earnings: "Xbox content and services revenue grew 34% driven by strength from third-party titles, Xbox Game Pass subscriptions, and first-party titles"
From their Q2 2021 earnings: "We exceeded $2 billion in revenue from third-party titles this quarter for the first time."
Sales revenue seem pretty good to me.
As I said, RE8 physical is down 40% from RE7. This should mean that RE8 is having a catastrophic launch, yet no one makes that argument. Why? Because everyone knows physical sales alone don't speak about a game's performance. Yet, those same physical sales are enough to talk doom and gloom about Xbox game sales performance. Hmmm... interesting.
Last edited by hiccupthehuman - on 11 May 2021