By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Ryuu96 on 08 April 2023
Edit Thread
aTokenYeti said:

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/owcghs/how_to_estimate_steam_video_game_sales_in_2021/

Was thinking about this post this morning. I have heard on podcasts that have interviewed game devs that this ratio is roughly accurate.

And if that is the case, then it can be conservatively estimated that Sea of thieves has sold about 8 million copies on steam alone. That is not game pass downloads, that is hard game sales, on just 1 platform. That's a staggering number IMO, and it would likely mean it's total sales number is in the ballpark of a number of major Sony and Nintendo AAA releases.

Another big one is Forza Horizon 5. Using this methodology it's steam sales are likely at about 3.6 million, conservatively. The in game leader board currently logs about 30 million players total, so when you combine sales from Xbox and the Xbox PC app, I think it is highly likely FH5 has sold at least 10 million copies total, and probably more.

I think the narrative that Xbox is not capable of making AAA hits has to die. They are absolutely killing it on steam right now

We do know it has sold a minimum of 5m on Steam as of December 2021 which was 18 months after its launch on Steam so add another 16 months of sales.

I've said before that I'm pretty confident in saying that Sea of Thieves has over 10m sales, likely closer to 15m. Years before the PC release near around the time they hit millions of players, one of the developers said that they have a 50/50 split between Game Pass/Sales and I think that was around when it had 4m players IIRC so I'd guess that Sea of Thieves has 3m+ sales on Xbox at the absolute minimum.

Sea of Thieves is huge, no matter how much old Rare heads want to stick their heads in the sand and try to ignore it It's one of Rare's most successful titles ever, it would be their most successful if not for Kinect Sports and it's a genuinely good and unique title with nothing else out there like it. Probably Microsoft's most successful new IP in over a decade.

Forza Horizon is huge too, yeah. Plenty of AAs from Microsoft are big on Steam as well. I always think about how successful Xbox IPs are on Steam and then wonder what that says about PC Game Pass, so many people would rather buy it on Steam than use PC Game Pass, Lol. Sales or Game Pass both benefit Microsoft but it'd be nice to see how much Game Pass could grow if it was available on Steam.