HiFi is in the 200-500k range on SteamSpy. Not exactly mindblowing sales 3 months after release, but it was a day one Gamepass title and a shadow drop. Probably another 100k sales at least on Xbox. If they aren't happy with 300-600k sales after 3 months and 2m+ players on a shadow dropped, lower budget game, their expectations for it were too high most likely. But they also largely have themselves to blame if it did underperform, they shadow dropped it, barely advertised it after release, and there was no physical release, standard or collectors.
As for Grubbins's management comment, would be nice to know which management he is talking about and if it's assumption or an actual source. Is it Phil that is unhappy about Xbox's recent performance, people under him like Booty and the head of Zenimax, or people over him like Satya? And is it an actual source you have Grubb?
I wouldn't be surprised if many at Xbox are unhappy, Gamepass sub growth seems to have slowed a good bit, Xbox lost like 2:1 against PS5 in the US, Xbox's strongest market, this past quarter, and its way worse than that in Europe and Japan and much of ROW, Xbox seems set to lose this gen by an even larger margin than last gen unless things turn around in a big way soon, Xbox and MS can't be happy with that result after all they have done to try and grow the brand the last 5 or 6 years, acquiring several lone studios and Zenimax (and attempting to acquire ABK right now), pushing Gamepass, designing much better hardware than last gen, etc.
If the higher-ups are unhappy, hopefully we see some big changes in the near future. We need better marketing, more 3rd party exclusives and marketing deals, growth into more markets (Xbox console hitting alot of those new PC Gamepass countries), much higher Series X production numbers, the first Series S price cut and/or a killer bundle for it, more limited edition consoles and controllers, etc.
Last edited by shikamaru317 - on 21 April 2023
