As part of the multiyear deal unveiled Thursday — financial terms were not disclosed — the 4 million-square-foot, open-air L.A. Live entertainment district, now going by Xbox Plaza, will be known as Peacock Place. The new names go into effect July 11.

Not surprised, they had Rad Sickness in Fallout and various Diseases in Skyrim like Rattles (lower stamina) and Rockjoint (reduced melee weapon damage). 

That was fast, hit 4m players just a month and a half ago on May 5th. 

10 million players to be successful? 

Here's the actual quote :

"“We have 10 games that have achieved over 10 million players life-to-date, which is a pretty big accomplishment, but that’s the kind of scale that we need to see success for the game and it’s just, it’s not quite there yet with AR, VR.”"

I am not sure I like Matt's statement here.

It's very hard to extrapolate anything from this it's too generic. Of course, when applied strictly to VR strategy it makes sense but we know a certain crowd will be using this opinion as fact without any nuance on and on to paint Xbox as unsuccessful most of the time.

Seems like an odd statement to make by Matt Booty. I don't see how you can set an arbitrary number like 10m players needed for a game to be a success when each game has a different budget. For a small indie made by a single digit sized dev team, only a few hundred thousand sales and let's say 2m players thanks to a Gamepass release is a massive success bringing in enough revenue for the devs to live comfortably for many years and still have enough leftover to budget their next few games, whereas for a $100m+ budget AAA, only 10m players (not sales, but players) on a Gamepass release seems low and unlikely to turn a profit on the game. VR games tend to be on the cheaper side, no true AAA VR game has been made as of yet, save for VR ports of AAA games that first released on PC/console like Skyrim, Fallout 4, and LA Noire, actual original VR games tend to be AA budget at the largest, due to the fact that the VR market hasn't grown enough to support AAA VR games as of yet, and many have more single A budgets. I don't think you need anywhere near 10m players to be a success on a single A or AA budgeted VR game. Not saying that I want Xbox to get into VR of course, I think they made the right call waiting another gen to try and break into VR, but I doubt that most VR devs are struggling to even break even on their releases like Booty is suggesting here.

Worse though, Booty stating an arbitrary 10m players needed for success number like that is going to make the Xbox fanbase sweat, as quite alot of Xbox IP's did less than that, meaning that a sequel for them would be unlikely if Booty really means 10m is needed. Ghostwire Tokyo just hit 5m players 15 months after release, while HiFi Rush's latest update was 2m players in March, which likely means it hasn't yet hit 3m players. Quite a few other recent 1st and 2nd party titles are also below 10m players, including Pentiment, Psychonauts 2, Gears Tactics, Tell Me Why, and Battletoads. Even The Outer Worlds only hit 5m sales as of the last update (no player information) and that was a multiplat release on Playstation and Switch, the sequel will be Xbox and PC only. 

What are your thoughts on the expansion into AR, VR? Other studios have been really diving head-on into that, but based on the showcase that we saw, that’s feeling more on the back burner [for Xbox].

I think for us, it’s just a bit of wait until there’s an audience there. We’re very fortunate that we have got these big IPs that have turned into ongoing franchises with big communities. We have 10 games that have achieved over 10 million players life-to-date, which is a pretty big accomplishment, but that’s the kind of scale that we need to see success for the game and it’s just, it’s not quite there yet with AR, VR.

---

It feels like editorializing to me on VGChronicles part.

Question is specifically about AR/VR. He basically said the market was tiny, bragged about their own achievements outside of AR/VR and essentially said that is the kind of audience they're after rather than a niche VR market. Success will ultimately depend on the budget of the title, 10m for Grounded is not the same as 10m for Forza Horizon 5 but they're unlikely to achieve these numbers on a consistent basis with VR.

He also says the 10m number is a "pretty big accomplishment" which to me, is a larger threshold than borderline success.