Isn't State of Decay 2 multiplayer co-operative anyway, does a "level playing field" even matter?

What. Are. You. Talking. About lol literally in your post fam.

"Since Early Access for the Ultimate Edition on May 18 and the global release of the Standard Edition on May 22, we have had over a million survivors across the globe playing and creating their own zombie survival story."

I am still a little confused on why it matters. The general public who buy video games don't ask the store people how well a game is selling for them to make a purchase, nor does a game selling extremely well or not will make that difference. Iv worked in retail long enough to know that customers rarely approach me on how good a game is selling for them to make a purchase. If someone is after a Zombie Survival game than most times they will pick up the SOD2 box and start reading the back info, not how much it has sold in general.

MS are saying 1m people are playing SOD2, regardless of platform, that is a good number across the broad, do we need accurate information? No I don't think we do. Is the game doing well? Well enough for MS to comment on it, that's all that really matters. 

Honestly games like SOD2 and Sea of Thieves are designed for Game Pass, its not about the short term sales, these are games that hold 100+ hours of gameplay, this is what MS seem to be focusing on to convince customers to subscribe to Live and Game Pass. The longer the game the higher the chance to increase those Game Pass memberships per month.

Anyone would want to know how good a game is via reviews, youtube vids or by whatever means. If a game is reviewed badly or okay, it's sales will reflect it. Personally, if a game has mp, I want to know how many concurrent players it has.

MS will comment on any game and find the biggest number to use (likely one that doesn't mean anything to gamers) in their pr. 10 million players that played it doesn't mean anything if it was off of a free trial or if they played it for a few hours and stopped playing it entirely or if they bought the game to play it.

SoT doesn't have the content to get most gamers to play for that long.

It probably sold 19 copies once you subtract all the free GamePass trials.

It seems like they could easily fix the X1X version simply by offering a performance mode that lowers the resolution. Or let the resolution drop further for a stable 30 fps.

I think there is simply a problem with studios not being efficient and perhaps making their games too ambitious. Games with a single player focus tend to launch in a more complete state than a game that attempts to offer a campaign, PvP, co-op, etc. With that said, MS games are pretty ambitious. Lets also consider Gran Turismo is taking an entire generation to release a complete product.

A majority of users are still buying 1st party MS games outright (not relying on Gamepass), so there still needs to be quality control for those buying the game.

Its a $30 game and the predecessor had a big following.

So you can definitely add a zero to the end of that 19.

I think you're probably right.  But, also think that we're going to have to get used to it.  The reality is that MS wants ongoing revenue from services - Gamepass and XBL being the big ones.  They essentially have said that they no longer care about sales at retail, as they've knowingly and purposely undermined their own ability to sell games.  The recent statement from Sony dude indicated that they too will put more focus on service revenues, as MS has been saying for years.

I don't have areal opinion on the whole "games as a service" concept*.  But, I think that's just the way the industry is moving whether we like it or not. 

* Gamepass is a big point in favor of GaaS.  

I think ~400k (digital+physical) out of that 1m players.
there could legit be 600k people either gameshareing/gamepass (free trail or paid).

its not bad for 6days of sales.

It only tracked 2 days so far. Either way, they get their money from xbox game pass.