https://twitter.com/VGC_News/status/1758141207807435131?t=_DD8prmtmcHJBRvFkbOc3w&s=19

Ugh, this really pisses me off. Big middle finger to Eidos and Embracer Group. Apparently the Deus Ex game Eidos has spent 2 years working on that Embracer just cancelled wasn't even an Adam Jensen game. They knew fans wanted more Adam Jensen, they knew there were many story threads surrounding him left hanging by the abrupt ending of Mankind Divided, but they instead decided to go with a different character and told Elias Toufexis to stop talking about Adam Jensen on social media and doing his voice at conventions and such. Dirty bastards.

Is the 34 million including the Xbox Live Gold name change to Game Pass Core?

— tae kim (@firstadopter) February 15, 2024

Yep. There were 11.7m Gold subscribers in April 2022 who will have (mostly) converted to core or ultimate)

— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) February 15, 2024

I think in a FTC deposition Phil said there were (at the time) single digit million Gold subs remaining.

Which lines up with there only being 34M total subs. Xbox had 33.6M subs on console back in April 2022, so a decline happened.

— John Welfare (@Welfare_JBP) February 15, 2024

Yup they stagnated for 2 whole years! They were at 33.6M before adding PC and now at 34M in total? that is the reason for this change. pic.twitter.com/RWBynFsaeI

— SomalianGamer (@sharmake25) February 15, 2024

They've basically been stagnating for two years. They'll really need some serious work outside of the hardware space (basically PC and cloud players) to experience significant growth at this point.

Did MS ever mention how many Xbox Series X/S they have sold since the end of Q3?

The price rise hurt them. I did not renew after my existing sub ran out, and have only dipped back in for a solitary month to catch up on some games I wanted to play but were missing out on (mainly Wartales). Will probably sub back for a month for Diablo IV. All my Gamepass purchases occurred when there were sales on the subscription price, and the cost would net out to approximately $10USD per month. And I would happily keep the service going indefinitely at that rate ($120USD per year). At $15 or higher per month, I am more likely to dip in 3 or 4 times per year.. ($45~$60USD per year total), so to max dollars from me only, a lower price would actually earn Xbox more.

On the plus side though I did purchase my first Xbox games in physical form in 3 years since I did not have a Gamepass sub running. On the downside for Xbox they were second hand games, so no additional revenue for the service. A loophole they will delete as they move to being digital only.

I am so erect rn, you have no idea. 

Enjoy pimp. Let the chat here know when you play, and let's try to convince Ryuu to play them!

We got our answer about whether Alan Wake 2 was a success or not. It sold 1m copies in the first 2 months and 1.3m copies as of early February, the fastest selling Remedy release so far, selling 50% more copies in it's first 2 months than Control sold in it's first 4 months.

Copies of the game were sold at $50 on PC and $60 on Xbox/PS at launch, but were discounted by 20% in mid December through the beginning of January, and then recently were discounted by 20% for a short few day long sale. Averaging out the launch and sale pricing assuming equal sales in both periods (full price sales were likely more than discount sales since it had over a month and a half at full price and less than 3 weeks on discount, but we will go with a 50/50 split for math purposes), we get $45 as the average sale price on PC and $54 on consoles. Let's also assume a 50/50 split between PC and console for math purposes (though console sales were likely higher since it was 2 console platforms and Epic Store exclusive on PC), so 650k sales on PC and 650k sales on console for the math. 650k x $45 is $29.25m in revenue for PC. 650k x $54 is $34.1m in revenue on console. Xbox and Playstaton take 30% of revenue for themselves, so $34.1m becomes $24.57m on console. Epic takes no revenue for the first 6 months if you sign a timed exclusivity deal with them, so all PC revenue so far has gone straight to Remedy.

So in this math example, we would be looking at $53.8m in revenue currently against a budget of 70m euros or $75.3m USD.

Though my example math is likely a bit lower than their actual revenue so far, it is likely that Alan Wake 2 hasn't quite broken even yet after the first 3 months of sales. However, the fact that it is selling much faster than Control is a very positive sign for the future, in this same post Remedy revealed that Control has sold 4m lifetime and went on to make 100m euros against it's production budget of 30m euros and an unknown marketing budget (though likely lower than Alan Wake 2's 20m euro marketing budget), so Control has likely made them at least 50m euros in profit lifetime. And Alan Wake 2 is selling significantly faster than Control so far, so Alan Wake 2 will likely break even within the next few months and likely double it's 70m euro budget or more in lifetime revenue, for a profit of at least 70m euros lifetime.

https://investors.remedygames.com/announcements/remedy-entertainment-plc-remedy-announces-sales-information-for-alan-wake-2/

My first thought was how will this effect eiyuden Chronicles - Hundred Heroes?
Sucks that illness can take away people like this.

*edit:

Also man that podcast made it seem like the Xbox rumors were a massive "nothing burger".
Why did it take them over a week to crush those rumors though, they should have just come out and done it day1.

Actually, I think they needed this week to have the people calm the fuck down. They didn't actually say much, not even which titles will be coming (maybe some of this reveals are contractually bound to be revealed in a Nintendo Direct). A week ago people would be unsatisfied. But the time actually helped people calm a little, so that this message can be heard. Some people still think it means Starfield will come, just a bit later, as they didn't directly deny it (I wouldn't either, who knows what happens years from now).

So that's the 'news'? Is the ritualistic burning of Xbox jerseys cancelled now?