The Age of Mythology love brings a tear to my eye

I would not have expected AoM to take #2. I'm guessing that Xbox has been running youtube ads of the trailer for AoM, ads greatly inflate view count. As for the rest of the rankings, most of it is pretty normal, though Doom feels low, I'm guessing the Bethesda channel upload got most of the views or something. 

I will not tolerate such heresy against AoM! fr though, I was figuring AoM and Avowed in particular are much higher on the list due to them being the more imminent releases compared to the rest. AoM is literally the next XGS release after Hellblade 2.

And yeah, Doom on Bethesda's YT channel has over 5 million views alone whereas on Xbox's YT channel, Doom doesn't even have 350K views lol.

I don't think it's just ads, I think AoM will be a surprise hit, at least a surprise to me.

I think AoM: Retold will surprise many. After all, AoE 4 peaked at nearly 74K players at launch on Steam with a $60 price tag and AoE 2 DE continues to peak at 20K players every day now after nearly 5 years.

Now with the franchise being as mainstream as it ever was, a spin-off that has a lot of mythologies that are deeply engrained in pop culture and has a closer remake treatment compared to the previous remasters, and launching alongside console day one, we could potentially see some record numbers for the franchise. Especially coming in at a much cheaper price point and even having a presence at Xbox's Summer Showcase for even more exposure.

We'll have to see what happens. The original pre-Steam AoM release seems to have sold around 2m in the first 4 years, while AoM Extended Edition (the remaster on Steam) is estimated at between 2-2.4m sales by 3 different trackers. Those certainly aren't bad numbers, but both of those numbers are well below AoE 2, which sold millions pre-Steam and is estimated to have sold anywhere from 5-8m upon it's later Steam HD in 2013 release. They're also somewhat lower than AoE 3, which sold 2m copies in the first 2 years pre-Steam, and an estimated 1.5-3.6m after it's later Steam release in 2012.

The AoE series saw a boost in popularity after the 2019 release of AoE 2 DE, with many playing it during the Covid lockdowns. Maybe the boosted popularity for AoE will transfer over to AoM as well. 

https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/lock-in-two-years-of-xbox-game-pass-ultimate-for-dollar6-per-month-with-this-neat-conversion-trick-before-the-price-jump-in-september

The conversion trick still works for a brief while longer, you can get 2 years of Gamepass Ultimate for just over 1/4th the price it will soon be. The math works out to $5.86 a month using this trick, soon to be $19.99. Only works if your Gamepass Ultimate sub is already expired or expires before the price increase in September though. 

In other news, auto-redeem, the cheapest way to get Gamepass sub codes with MS Rewards points outside of the conversion trick above, is ending next month. After that point, you will be forced to buy your Gamepass sub codes at the full price in points, with the full point price presumably increasing as well to match the new $ price. So effectively a double price increase for rewards points users.

The current auto-redeem point cost for Gamepass Ultimate is 10,500 points for 1 month. With auto-redeem ending in August, your cheapest option will then become buying a 3 month code for 35,000 points, or 3,500 points more every 3 months than auto-redeem on 1 month codes. Then in September the price of Ultimate will increase from $17 a month to $20 a month, so the points cost of 3 month codes should then increase from 35,000 to probably at least 39,000, maybe 40,000. So basically the points cost of Gamepass Ultimate will soon increase from 10,500 a month to probably 13,000 a month or more.