In anticipation of Avowed's imminent release, I figured it would be a good time to bring up that I don't wanna see any dooming on the game that is exclusively based on Steam's concurrent player count. Seeing how high player counts can get on Steam can be fun, but if you're disappointed with the peak player count, remember that is FAR from the entire story.

Indiana Jones has been the best example that Steam is not the one all be all on a game's success. 4 million players in the first month, yet the game only peaked at 12,000 concurrent players on Steam. With SteamDB having sales estimates for the game anywhere between 120K-380K on the platform. With the correct answer most likely being somewhere in the middle.

Avowed is after all supposed to be a major Game Pass sell. So was Indiana Jones, and it was clearly successful in that regard. And with confirmation that PC Game Pass grew by over 30% this past quarter, it's unknown how many players are now enjoying Xbox's first party games on the Xbox app for PC rather than Steam. Remember this game is also going to be releasing on Battle.net to go after the Blizzard fanbase.

So, if Avowed's concurrent player count goes well past the 5 figure mark and starts to push the 6 figure mark, GREAT! If it doesn't, remember it's not the end of the world and that's only one slice of the whole pie. And considering how packed February is currently with 2 Steam juggernauts with the likes of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 and Civilization 7, now followed by the likes of Elden Ring: Nightreign public network test (a game which shot to number 4 on Steam's most wishlisted games nearly overnight) and with Monster Hunter Wilds around the corner which also a massive seller on Steam (and is number 1 on Steam's most wishlisted games) there is a high likelihood that Avowed on Steam will be affected. To what extent remains to be seen.

Be excited that the game is finally releasing, and if the constant online teases by reviewers trying REALLY hard not to break the embargo means anything, it sounds like Obsidian could have a real winner on their hands

It'd be funny if Avowed is more popular on Battle.net than Windows Store.

It's pretty awesome to have cross-buy between Windows Store/Battle.net as well.

I'm choosing to be a bit delulu and hope when Fantasy Life is shown at state of play an xbox port is announced alongside a PC port lol

Saber Interactive's CEO says the studio was given the contract to develop Halo Anniversary because he offered to do it for free.

He also says Saber's first big royalty payment was due to Xbox forgetting to offer a contract for other work it was doing.

www.videogameschronicle.com/news/saber-g...

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— VGC (@videogameschronicle.com) 12 February 2025 at 09:34

The NASCAR Series is returning to Forza Motorsport Multiplayer as a permanent addition.

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— Klobrille (@klobrille.bsky.social) 12 February 2025 at 17:06

Meh, you can't be like ' starfield did amazing see how many concurrent players awesome and it is on pc gamepass!!!'  but then be annoyed when a game doesn't well and say it doesn't mean anything.

I would say Starfield is a bit of a unique case, Bethesda is a studio in the upper tier of popularity in sales, it didn't need Gamepass to hit big player numbers, which was why it was able to hit 330k peak concurrent on Steam and ultimately sell an estimated 3.5-4.5m copies there so far, in addition to Xbox console sales and Gamepass players.

Obsidian on the other has never been a studio whose games sold all that well. While their licensed games like South Park and Fallout New Vegas sold well, their original IP's have never been massive sellers. Alpha Protocol flopped, causing Sega to have to lower their projections for the fiscal quarter it released in. Tyranny only sold like 1m copies lifetime. Pillars of Eternity sold like 3m lifetime while it's sequel tracked well behind the first game in sales. Only The Outer Worlds has been particularly successful for them, selling over 4m copies in the first 2 years.

Nobody should go in expecting some huge 100k+ peak concurrent players on Steam for Avowed, it'll be lucky if it can match the 41k peak of Pillars of Eternity, the IP it spunoff from, since PC Gamepass and the Battle.net release will surely pull some Steam sales. I think we should be happy if it can top the 21k peak of Pillars of Eternity 2, if it can pull that off while also doing well on Xbox, Gamepass, and Battle.net, I think Xbox will be happy with the sales and greenlight a sequel.

I was just going to quote G2 and tell him he posted in the wrong thread, because everyone here already knew that.  I was wrong.

CCU IMO is meant to be more for fun, it's one piece of a large puzzle, of course when a game hits extreme highs on CCU it points to a large success but just because a game doesn't hit high CCUs on Steam it does not automatically mean it's a failure. People have became too obsessed with CCUs nowadays and too focused on using it to determine success or failure. It's like how Metacritic stopped being fun when it got overtaken by console wars. Also, CCUs can't be applied to every single genre, type of videogame on an even scale.

If a game has like 100 CCUs then that obviously paints a bad picture but it can't be said with certainty that a 10k-100k CCU count is automatically a failure when there's a number of other factors at play to take into account. Also Josh Sawyer literally did a video on this a few weeks ago saying that RPGs don't tend to be massive sellers right out of the gate but instead have strong legs. If Avowed hits some CCU high then awesome, if it doesn't then it doesn't mean it's a failure, is all G2 and others are trying to say.