It's nice to see Monster Hunter Rise #2 on Switch and #8 overall YTD. Well deserved, it's an amazing game.

Considering there's almost 70k players on TA alone.. I'd say it did exactly what MS wanted from it, game pass engagement. 

When I think Double Fine, Tim Schafer is one of the first things that pops to mind.
Then old games he did at Lucas Arts, like Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle,... and then their remakes resently.
After Lucas Arts, Im not sure how successfull Tim Schafer has been in terms of sales (ei. he makes great games, that dont do blockbuster level sales).

Stuff like Stacking, and Phychonauts, are made after Lucas Arts.
But like.... heres from the wiki of Phychonauts:

"Despite Psychonauts earning high critical praise and a number of awards, it was a commercial failure upon its initial release.^[53] Although the game was first cited as the primary contributing factor to a strong quarter immediately following its launch,^[54] a month later Majesco revised their fiscal year projections from a net profit of $18 million to a net loss of $18 million,^[55] and at the same time its CEO, Carl Yankowski, announced his immediate resignation.^[56] By the end of the year, the title had shipped fewer than 100,000 copies in North America, and Majesco announced its plans to withdraw from the "big budget console game marketplace"."

1st Phychonauts game shipped (not sold) less than 100k sales (back before digital), in the US, after a full year.
Even though it reviewed well enough, and critics liked it.

To this day, I think Grim Fandango is the best game, Tim Schafter has ever been apart of, and also the best selling.
Howmuch of that was due to Lucas Arts?

After Tim Schafer went on his own, alot of their games just barely broke even, and they had to sometimes rely on crowd sourceing to get games made.
They didn't sell gangbusters, or make huge profits.

But again, maybe thats not the point.
Tim Schafer makes quirky games, that stand out for their slight oddness, and art style.... usually with fresh ideas behinde them.

Still this was such a odd get for Xbox.
I honestly dont think, the xbox crowd was much into these sorts of games.
If not for xbox buying them, I dont think they would get much notice from the xbox crowd.

If with xbox fans behinde them, in a dry periode, they dont succede... thats not a great look.
Also Phychonauts, is more "main stream" than some of those other games they make.

Maybe with enough money behinde them, they can just change though to suit their target audience better?
Make bigger more main stream type games, and tone down the quirkiness levels? Undoubtably MS probably has some people overseeing them, and doing so.

Note: This game is also on PS4,PS5,PC as well.....  If in future it goes full exclusive to xbox, sales will be impacted.
(ei. I suspect this sells more on PS4/PS5, than XB1/XSS+X)

Using ERA predictions
Switch < 348k
PS5 >292k
XBS < 199k

VGC has:

Switch - 370k
PS5 - 251k
XBS - 228.5k

So if those numbers are close not too far out. Slightly over for Switch and Xbox, under for PS5.

August 2014: PS4 175k
August 2021: PS5 at least 271-357k

PS4 exploded in September though, so next months competition will be a lot harder.

I mean, I overestimated the switch, but  the other two were pretty correct.

I expect one more "slow" month in Sept for Switch before the explosion in Q4. Should end similar to last year which many thought would be impossible.
Even a 5-10% decline should be seen as impressive but I feel like it actually has a shot at a 5% increase yoy.

I think Switch will still win U.S by a 2 or so million margin. It looking like it will win this year by 3-3.5 million.

However, I do it likely that PS5 (or even XBS) will end Switch's streak next year.