Salnax 10 hours ago
Xbox Game Pass. It's arguably the biggest reason people have bought the Xbox Series X/S. Just compare Gamepass's Subscriber count to the total number of Xbox's sold this gen (30 million vs 35 million).
Besides that, there have been a few games post-2010 that have also moved hardware:
- Forza Horizon series (2012 onwards) - FH3 passed 10 million players by 2018, FH4 had 24 million players by 2020, and FH5 had 20 million players within seven months. Even if we assume half of these are on PC, that's still a significant exclusive.
- Grand Theft Auto V (2022) - No really, if you look at the weekly sales of the Xbox Series, they shot up about 80% the week GTA5 got its XS version in May 2023. That technically counts.
- Minecraft: Xbox 360 Version (2012) - VGChartz has the X360 version of Minecraft alone selling 13 million units. This was due in part to the X360 version getting released just a few months after the main PC release, with a retail release in 2013. Other consoles had to wait more than a year after that to get their versions. Minecraft bundles also seem to have been widespread at the end of the 360's life.
- PUBG: Battlegrounds - Like with Minecraft, PUBG was one of the world's biggest games, and the Xbox 1 was the first console you could play it on. 9 million people bought it on Xbox 1 before the PS4 version came out.
There are also a few dishonorable mentions I could make (Starfield, Halo 5/Infinite, Rise of the Tomb Raider, etc). And arguably Sea of Thieves, though most of its sales seem to have come after they went multiplatform.
