Sigh... ANOTHER "Xbox is in trouble because of the split"? And again using only physical sales. We've already established Xbox sales are higher digitally...

Xbox is not in trouble. Xbox is literally more profitable than ever. 3rd party sales are higher than ever. Profits are higher than ever. The trillion dollar parent company, Microsoft, is now fully backing and investing in Xbox.

Devs don't care all that much about the split (tho fanboys seem to care a lot about them).

It's all about profits. Just like how Horizon: Zero Dawn has a split ~90%/10% on PS/PC; but the PC release generated a 250% return on investment. So Sony is going to continue to release games on PC (as their leaked internal document has revealed).

It's the same thing on Xbox. Even if only 20% of sales are on Xbox, so what? The return of investment is massive for the developers. And they'll continue to support Xbox. 

RE8 launched to ~50K going by Era estimates and the split was 80:20 PS:Xbox.

PS4/5: 40K
XB1/XS: 10K

But then the split goes to 58:31:11 with digital. David Gibson said digital for RE8 was around 50% at launch. Let's assume PS is 50% digital. That then means

PS4/5: 80K
XB1/XS: 43K

Xbox has a 77% digital share. If PS has a 60% digital share

PS4/5: 100K
XB1/XS: 53K

Xbox has an 81% digital share.

Actually there is info on physical RE8 after 4 weeks. So here's that. ~83K total. 50% digital for PS5 assuming retail split is still 80:20 after 4 weeks.

PS4/5: 133K
XB1/XS: 71K

Xbox has a 76% digital share. If PS has a 60% digital share

PS4/5: 166K
XB1/XS: 89K

Xbox has an 81% digital share.

Physical only charts are objectively worthless for Xbox and offer no real info. Xbox also has a +20% digital share compared to PS which is a pretty big jump.

Because of 360? 1) one gen does not mean they were generally big in the UK, 2) I replaced countless consoles when I worked for GAME, and the majority were new sales. Point is the lifetime sales are not clear cut, I say divide by two and there is the true sale numbers. RROD makes it very murky.

Thats not true. Xbox has 60%+ of its sales in regions of higher digital ratios. Xbox is non-existent in Asia, meanwhile PS does well in Asia, a region where digital sales are lower hence why on average global PS digital ratio is lower.

You are incorrect to extrapolate this onto UK PS performance. Afaik there is no reason to believe PS UK digital is different to Xbox UK digital unless you have numbers to show that.

You are also wrong on multiple points:

1) Xbox has never posted profit numbers, afaik from the ten years I've been reading their financials. In the recent court hearing, MS claimed Xbox hardware does not turn a profit.

2) 3rd party sales are far lower than during their 360 days. Now Playstation has beaten Xbox in both UK and US by 60/40 or 70/30 ratio. Remember the ratio in EU is something like 85/15 and in Asia its like 98/02.

3) MS's marketcap has little to do with a subdivisions performance. MS's market cap didn't save their multi-billion phone OS venture, didn't save their multi-billion tablet venture, didn't save their multi-billion video conferencing venture etc etc.

4) It def does matter to JP devs. If less than 10% of sales are on Xbox then its incredibly easy for them to be Playstation exclusive. It also matters to the entire business model: most of the money Sony and MS make comes from their 30% commission of third party sales. With third party sales cratering for Xbox alongside with first party sales, its no wonder why Xbox can no longer compete with Sony as a hardware platform and instead is forced to follow a sub model.

seeing as you are so into it why didn't you know they dont make money on the consoles but they do on everything else, as usual you are talking nonsense
https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-confirms-it-doesnt-make-money-xbox-console-sales-its-all-about-software
https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/6/22422691/microsoft-xbox-consoles-profit-software-services-revenue-apple-epic-games-trial

I should be more clear, 1) is talking about overall profits. MS have never revealed Xbox's profits so its impossible to know. Editing the second bit to Xbox hardware.

It is true.

Xbox One Has Higher Ratio Of Digital Game Sales Than Other Platforms – Analyst (gamingbolt.com)

And I do have numbers to show that. RE8 physical sales split was 80/20 PS/XB. Total sales (including digital) was 65/35. That's a 30-percentage swing.

1) They claimed hardware does not make a profit. The division as a whole is profitable. Consoles (especially high-end consoles like PS, Xbox) are typically sold at a loss or barely breaking even. Both Sony and MS make the majority of their profits from software and services, not hardware.  

Sony is no different in that regard

"Sony’s Chief Executive Officer Kenichiro Yoshida has said the business should be judged by the number of active users, not the number of hardware units sold."

Sony Is Struggling With PlayStation 5 Price Due to Costly Parts (yahoo.com)

And Xbox's active users are growing, so according to the Sony CEO himself, Xbox's gaming business is doing well. You going to try to claim the Sony CEO is wrong?

2) "3rd party sales are far lower than during their 360 days." Wrong.

"We exceeded $2 billion in revenue from third-party titles this quarter for the first time," Nadella informed.

So yeah, third-party profits are higher now than even during the 360 days. 

Microsoft surpasses $5bn in gaming revenue for the first time: Nadella | Business Standard News (business-standard.com)

Yeah PS is doing better, but so what? Xbox is doing incredibly well and is a viable platforms for consumers and developers.

3) Xbox is now anchored in the cloud, which is by far MS's biggest and safest money-maker. Xbox is future-proof. When you have the MS CEO state multiple times about how Xbox is important to MS, and appear in public with Phil Spencer, you know there are serious. Never did former CEOs Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates, talk about Xbox as extensively as Satya does. 

If Xbox financials were that bad, do you think Satya would have approved of spending of billions of dollars to acquire studios for Xbox? Better yet, you think Zenimax would have have looked over at the financials of their potential new parent subdivision, and then agreed to be purchased? lol

4) "It def does matter to JP devs. If less than 10% of sales are on Xbox then its incredibly easy for them to be Playstation exclusive."

Yeah true, the price for them to be PS exclusive is probably lower. But it would still be very easy for them to be MS exclusive. Reminder that MS could have easily paid for those games to be exclusive/timed even with the smaller market share, but they seem focused on acquiring studios and doing Game Pass deals. Because the big AAA JP exclusives Sony has (Ghostwire Tokyo, Final Fantasy, Forspoken) they were paid for.

You know Epic Games has probably a ~5% PC marketshare and has no problems getting PC exclusives right? if you have enough cash (like Epic or MS), the market share can and will easily be overlooked.

Zhuge is talking about global, exactly what I said prior. Source for the RE digital split.

1) Wrong. MS has never revealed Xbox profit numbers. Sony and Nintendo have been reporting billions of profit for years now.

2) Nope, Sony makes money on hardware. In the court case MS claimed they have never made money on hardware. Nintendo sells their hardware at profit.

PS4 hardware was profitable 6 months after launch https://www.polygon.com/2014/5/23/5744344/ps4-already-profitable-for-sony-ceo-says

3) MAU is not a reliable metric as each publisher counts it in numerous ways. We have actual sales numbers. Xbox hardware and software are in massive decline.

4) Revenue =/ sales. Games generate far more revenue nowadays due to microtransactions and DLC. My point still stands. 3rd party sales are far lower, hence why Sony has a far higher marketshare.

5) If Xbox was dong well MS would not be so scared to report financial information like Sony and Nintendo do. Instead, even under court, they are worried about the numbers being publicly known.

6) CEO Steve Ballmer extensively talked about Windows phone OS. You know what happened to that.....

7) You are completely wrong and its frankly an ignorant take to suggest that throwing money is what business relationships look like. No JP dev would ever make their AAA tentpole franchise Xbox exclusive at this moment. They would refuse whatever MS's offer is, because being an Xbox exclusive would alienate 90% of their fans and possibly ruin their IP going forward.

Its funny you mention Epic because they revealed in court documents that they are struggling to make a dent in the PC space despite chucking hundreds of millions at devs, all while Fortnite is in serious revenue and profit decline. But yes I would place Epic as being a similar position to Xbox:

Epic is taking a loss, moneyhatting in a desperate attempt to compete with Steam. Xbox is taking a loss, buying out entire companies, in a desperate attempt to compete with Playstation, though the PS:X ratio is like 65:35 while the Steam:Epic ratio is like 90:10.

Look at previous comments in the thread to see sources.

1 and 5) are dumb points to make. Just because MS doesn't reveal profits of individual divisions to the public does not mean it is not making profits. I know it is what YOU WANT to believe, but it ain't like that.

You know MS (as a whole) does not reveal the profits of LinkedIn, or Office Commercial Products, Enterprise Services, etc.. MS has an 80% market share on computer OS and still don't report profits from that division. I guess that must mean every division of MS is non-profitable?! Oh my! It's a common practice to leave that info for investors. Apple, another trillion dollar company, does that as well.

2) Yes, I'm well aware the PS4 was profitable soon after launch. I could just as easily point out that the PS3 was well-known to be sold at a loss, even at its massive launch 600$ price, and was a great source of revenue decline for Sony early in the 7th gen. It wasn't until the PS3 Slim 3 years later that it switched. Sony really strived to make it different with the PS4. The PS4 was an anomaly to how costly the PS3 was to manufacture.

Doesn't change the fact that software and services are what drives Sony and MS forward. In 2013, console sales were 48% of PS revenue split. In 2020, they are only 20%. Which is why they're now bringing their games to PS4, PC, because console sales typically don't generate that much profit as a whole.

PS5 Standard Edition Breaks Even Next Month; Horizon Zero Dawn PC Registered 250% ROI to Date (wccftech.com)

PS5 Is Being Sold At A Loss, Sony Confirms--And That's Not Unusual Or Cause For Alarm - GameSpot

Ps5 was sold at a loss, which is normal. It's only going to break even (not be profitable, mind you) in a month. As I said, the vast majority of revenue is not from console sales. Same as Xbox.

3) "MAU is not a reliable metric as each publisher counts it in numerous ways. We have actual sales numbers. Xbox hardware and software are in massive decline."

Literally nothing to back any of this up. Xbox Series sales are incredibly healthy, averaging 100k a week so far. It's selling out and extremely hard to find, and has better sales than the 360 and Xbox One at the same period in their life cycles. Revenue is up and were higher than during the 360 days, which obviously correlates with software sales as well. And here you are disagreeing with the Sony CEO. LOL

Halo MCC, Sea of Thieves, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Grounded, Ori and the Will of The Wisps were all on the Steam's best-selling games of 2020.

Le top de 2020 sur Steam (steampowered.com)

4) "Revenue =/ sales. Games generate far more revenue nowadays due to microtransactions and DLC. My point still stands. 3rd party sales are far lower, hence why Sony has a far higher marketshare."

Ok, and? Tell me why I or anybody else supposed to care? You keep exposing yourself as the fanboy you are. 3rd party devs have always supported Xbox and will keep doing so, even if PS has a higher market share. So again, so what? Still ignored the graph figure that showed the massive growth from the 360 days. You attribute 100% of the doubling of revenue only from microtransactions/DLC? LOL come on now.

6) ??? Steve Ballmer is long gone, and is a different person than the current CEO, Should I keep referring to Phil Harrison to talk about PlayStation?

Still haven't addressed the fact of the billions being spent to grow Xbox. Or Zenimax agreeing to be acquired by a division that is losing billions of money (according to you). Acquisitions of this scale took months and months of going through every legal documents, combing through every financial detail, holding extensive negotiations about the long-term ramifications of this deal. You've dodged the question: Would the Zenimax Investor Group have agreed to be acquired by a subdivisions bleeding billions of dollars? 

7)  Nearly every big AAA JP games that were once exclusive by default to PS last-gen is coming to XB: Nier, Yakuza, Judgment, Dragon Quest. The only one missing is Persona, and even that game is rumored to be coming. And yes, there would be backlash for existing IPs to suddenly become exclusive. But new IPs? We'll see. Tango Gameworks are already going to make AAA exclusive JP games for Xbox.

"Xbox is taking a loss, buying out entire companies, in a desperate attempt to compete with Playstation, though the PS:X ratio is like 65:35 while the Steam:Epic ratio is like 90:10."

Again, Xbox is only taking a loss in your dreams. Also, when Sony moneyhats timed exclusive, it's not desperate? Oh the sweet, sweet hypocrisy. Sony paid for exclusivity for Randy Pitchford's Godfall and Marvel's Avengers LOL. That doesn't look desperate to you? Anyway, MS is just able to use Sony's strategy of buying exclusivity, but instead just one-ups them  and get an entire publisher. It's funny, because Sony's approach of trying to get timed exclusivity for anything it can get is the same as Epic Games.

Who cares about the ratio? As long as games show up on Xbox day and date as PS, and they do. So what? That's like saying: "X person is making a salary of 500k/yr and has a far higher salary than Y, who only makes 250k/year. Y's in trouble" lol no he isn't. Y is a winner, X is a winner too.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-06-27-mario-golf-super-rush-ends-ratchet-and-clanks-stay-at-the-top-uk-boxed-charts

"There are a number of new games in the charts this week. Scarlet Nexus from Bandai Namco debuts at No.8, with 58% of sales on PS5, 21% on PS4 and 20% on Xbox consoles."

Around 80% of their sales are on PS4+PS5 vs 20% on Xbox consoles.

Another game with a split where the vast majority of console sales were on playstation.
Its a pattern at this point.

Games sell much more on playstation.
(digital splits, are roughly the same for both, so you cant go "digital sales are higher on xbox")

Its people sub to gamepass, and stop buying games.

(even when games arnt yet on gamepass, they are like "we'll wait".
This has to be hurting devs revenue, from xbox platforms imo, and physical sale stores)


edit:
Supposedly this was marketed on xbox too? and the sales split still looks like this.

Bonus question, does it matter if "Xbox turns into a gameass only platform?".
How big is the effect on revenue for dev studios, and physical stores that sell xbox stuff?