There is 0 chance Starfield has broke even let alone made a single penny in profit for Microsoft/Bethesda.
We can see from Sony's data what kind of money a blockbuster hit game brings in, Spider-Man 2018 was over 20 million in sales against a $128 million budget + $44 mill marketing spend.
Starfield is reportedly over $400 million in budget + marketing. Who honestly thinks this game has even close to 20 million in sales? Probably not even 10 million, if they had even that they would have made a press release saying so (not "players" actual sales).
This game more than anything else probably actually destroyed the XBox brand, when Microsoft did not get any kind of return on an investment this massive all of the sudden a few months later they're suddenly "open" to putting bigger XBox games on the PS5 (and likely soon Switch 2). My what a coincidence. More like they were horrified with the return on this game and realized they can't support the XBox + PC with those types of exclusives at that kind of spending.
If this happened to a "normal" 3rd party that doesn't have billions in the bank like MS, a flop like this probably sink a company outright. For Microsoft it just sank the XBox by pushing MS into full blown multi-platformism and not even giving the XBox a chance to see how some other exclusives may have done. They sobered up damn quick, much like Square-Enix going running for multiplatform hills as soon as those FF7 Rebirth sales kicked them in the nuts.
That's the other thing when a big budget game underperforms it's not like the old days where it was "well, there, there try harder next time". Now if a big budget game doesn't deliver big numbers, the consequences are much more severe. Management wants a total change in strategy, the bean counters take over, etc. etc.
Last edited by Soundwave - on 12 June 2024
