Business is business, Microsoft shouldn't be expected to pay for every single Square Enix port, nobody is being screwed over.

Don't know what else this could even reference...America and Japan are extremely close allies, Lol.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/owcghs/how_to_estimate_steam_video_game_sales_in_2021/

Was thinking about this post this morning. I have heard on podcasts that have interviewed game devs that this ratio is roughly accurate.

And if that is the case, then it can be conservatively estimated that Sea of thieves has sold about 8 million copies on steam alone. That is not game pass downloads, that is hard game sales, on just 1 platform. That's a staggering number IMO, and it would likely mean it's total sales number is in the ballpark of a number of major Sony and Nintendo AAA releases.

Another big one is Forza Horizon 5. Using this methodology it's steam sales are likely at about 3.6 million, conservatively. The in game leader board currently logs about 30 million players total, so when you combine sales from Xbox and the Xbox PC app, I think it is highly likely FH5 has sold at least 10 million copies total, and probably more.

I think the narrative that Xbox is not capable of making AAA hits has to die. They are absolutely killing it on steam right now

We do know it has sold a minimum of 5m on Steam as of December 2021 which was 18 months after its launch on Steam so add another 16 months of sales.

I've said before that I'm pretty confident in saying that Sea of Thieves has over 10m sales, likely closer to 15m. Years before the PC release near around the time they hit millions of players, one of the developers said that they have a 50/50 split between Game Pass/Sales and I think that was around when it had 4m players IIRC so I'd guess that Sea of Thieves has 3m+ sales on Xbox at the absolute minimum.

Sea of Thieves is huge, no matter how much old Rare heads want to stick their heads in the sand and try to ignore it It's one of Rare's most successful titles ever, it would be their most successful if not for Kinect Sports and it's a genuinely good and unique title with nothing else out there like it. Probably Microsoft's most successful new IP in over a decade.

Forza Horizon is huge too, yeah. Plenty of AAs from Microsoft are big on Steam as well. I always think about how successful Xbox IPs are on Steam and then wonder what that says about PC Game Pass, so many people would rather buy it on Steam than use PC Game Pass, Lol. Sales or Game Pass both benefit Microsoft but it'd be nice to see how much Game Pass could grow if it was available on Steam.

Close allies mean nothing see the inflation reduction act as an example and the reaction on a global scale from it. 

Anyway on topic, MS screwed over some Japanese from ditching to the publishing deal with mistwalker, to cancelling scalebound meanwhile we have a Spencer who said for 5 or even 10 years.  We are listening to our fans and we know games from Japan are important and the result ends up 'here is another game you played years ago on PS now you can do it again on xbox' 

Yes business is business we can't complain Sony paying Se while MS doesn't want to do it.

If Xbox players actually put their bro shooters down for a minute and actually bought Japanese games…. Xbox would have more Japanese games. And … yeah … why would they put Japanese sequel #24 on Xbox when #1-23 weren’t … cmon now.

Btw the store is really messed up and it is getting worse, the daily 'the store needs an update' issue is something I can live with but now sometimes deals will not pop up while if I search for the game I can see it is on sale. Another example I tend to get some of the kemco games whlie they are on sale and I would search kemco and get +50 game results and now I get only 1 (liege dragon something) when I browse by genre and click on RPG's I only get 20-30 results.

Why would sony pay for Octopath traveller II while I wasn't on PS?

We literally had a ton of posts in this thread that you basically can summarize as 'Sony/Jim are assholes for paying money to get game SE games'  'Good that FTC or whatever pointed to Japan that they should look into Sony's dominance and unfriendly monopoly practices with third party's like SE'..

Now we possible may know the truth that you can't blame Sony or SE but MS for it. I understand business is business but don't use PR like 'we are listening to our fans' 

Close allies mean a lot actually, a lot more than temporary trade disputes, Lol. Lets take for example that Japan was an absolute fucking mess after WW2 and America helped them recover economically despite the fact they were enemies and helped protect them from China, North Korea and Russia and still do to this day.

How is Microsoft choosing not to publish Mistwalker's 3rd title screwing them over? Are we also ignoring the fact that Microsoft literally helped set Mistwalker up with financial backing and funding of two JRPGs? They don't have to keep funding every single Mistwalker title if they don't want to and why did no other publisher fund this 3rd title from Mistwalker? Are they all screwing over Mistwalker as well?

I know people hate Mobile titles here but I'm fairly sure Mistwalker is doing Mobile titles nowadays as well simply because they want to and maybe because they lost their development partners in Artoon and Feelplus, a reminder that Mistwalker was not a development studio at the time and more of a creative oversight studio.

Platinum have said multiple times that they are equally to blame for Scalebound's cancellation and don't like Microsoft taking the blame, Lol. Shit happens, Scalebound was in a complete mess and Xbox didn't have money to burn back then, Platinum were given enough chances to get it sorted and couldn't deliver, I don't really blame anyone, I just think Platinum wasn't ready at the time and Xbox has a business to think about.

Japan support for Xbox has improved a ton since the Xbox One era, but when a Square Enix title skips the platform everyone loses their minds and acts like support is worse than ever, Lol. Ignoring all the series that have came to Xbox recently, some for the first time ever, that is progress whether Sony got it first or not. They literally just had a month where they released 4 Japanese titles straight into Game Pass, two of which being brand new to PS5/Xbox.

I don't really complain much about Sony's moneyhats, Lol. Don't care about half of the stuff they moneyhat, I mostly angle towards pointing out hypocrisy and say that ABK should pass due to Sony's dominance, and yes, Sony creating a market definition which is only Xbox/PlayStation does harm them because it paints a picture of Sony dominance which helps them drown out rivals, that isn't personal opinion but a comment on the market that Sony helped invent.

Xbox doesn't need to fund every single Square port, other publishers far less wealthy than Square manage to continue to support Xbox with IPs far less popular and do so without Game Pass. Square simply doesn't want to try to grow a fanbase and wants someone to keep paying them, cool, they can do that, but it isn't Xbox's fault.

People inventing drama between America/Japan over console wars is so...Lol.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II & Warzone 2.0 - Season 03 Launch Trailer | PS5 & PS4 Games - YouTube

As SIE’s CEO, Jim Ryan, explained to the CMA at the Remedies Hearing, if PlayStation received a degraded version of Call of Duty, it would “seriously damage our reputation. Our gamers would desert our platform in droves and network effects would exacerbate the problem. Our business would never recover.”

A fridge full of beer and a gaming night, doesn't get any better than this! Halo, Gears 5 and Evil Dead are tonight's games.