VGChartz spying!!!! lol

Fuck Musk.

Twitter uploading sucked anyway.

@derpysquirtle64 you called it.

Xbox getting SF 6 demo 6 days later.... Another L?

Spotted by GlobeGamer on ResetEra.

Compulsion Games has two Narrative Directors.

Lisa H. - NARRATIVE DIRECTOR - Compulsion Games | LinkedIn

Mark Slutsky - Narrative Director - Compulsion Games | LinkedIn

Unless he's replacing Lisa then it would sort of imply that Compulsion Games is spinning up their next project already (after Midnight).

Midnight reveal in June I hope. Compulsion is kind of the biggest unknown of the studios MS has acquired (not counting mobile devs).

Exclusive demos are truly the dumbest fucking thing.

https://twistedvoxel.com/hi-fi-rush-failed-sales-microsoft-unhappy-state-xbox/

“ He mentioned that, assuming the Activision Blizzard King acquisition goes through, Call of Duty could serve the role of a bigger title that draws in massive micro-transaction revenue, paving the way for smaller, experimental titles to exist. That said, Grubb added that it still feels like Microsoft’s decision making with respect to game management seems “sloppy”.”

“ Later in the podcast, Grubb stated that the management at Microsoft is unhappy with the current state of Xbox. He added that the company didn’t release a first-party game in the year 2022. According to him, while that may not affect some people, it does make others regret their console purchase decision. There is hope that the upcoming Xbox Games Showcase will address things on that front, and that things will be better for the publisher in 2023.”


What little sales data is available suggests that the Xbox Series consoles were tracking well ahead of Xbox one launch aligned sales and were more or less selling everything they made until about Q4 of 2022, and the lack of major software releases combined with a not insignificant portion of Series X chips being taken out of the supply chain for xcloud deployment created a perfect storm of the only Xbox being available being the one people don’t want right now (the series S) and no new first party software to boot. Console sales for the Series have plummeted since that point.
I think that point in the first paragraph is largely correct, realistically COD will subsidize the rest of XGS.

But a situation like 2022 cannot be allowed to happen again if they want a sustainable position in the console market. Some of this is arguably out of their control (Redfall and Starfield were clearly not ready and forcing them out last year would have been a mistake), but there are a lot of planning choices they could have made to mitigate and account for delays.
For example, releasing Gears 5 in 2019, instead of delaying it a year for polish and then using it as the main launch exclusive. And from there, imagine if Halo Infinite launched in 2022 in its current state rather than 2021 in the state that it did.

A 1 2 3 4 flagship release cadence for the first 4 years of the generation of Gears 5, Forza Horizon 5, Halo Infinite, and then Starfield. As opposed to releasing gears at the end of a generation people had stopped caring about, then releasing two flagship titles within a month of each other in 2021, then nothing for 2022, then pinning all of your hopes on 2023.

Just seems like a lot of their content problems have relatively easy fixes, which makes me think maybe I’m missing something

If MS really is unhappy with the sales of Hi-Fi, honestly, they're fucking idiots. Like...you launched a game nobody knew about on GP the instant it was revealed...how's it gonna sell a bunch of copies?

First Time Podcast Listeners

1. When Jez says something on a Podcast he always says to take it with a large grain of salt because as Jez himself says, anything which he is sure on or has hard evidence for, he would create an article around it because he works for Windows Central and has a job to do. Windows Central is more important than the Podcast and where he puts his reputation on the line, the Podcast isn't.

2. Likewise, this should apply to Jeff Grubb as well, I would assume. If he was sure on his sources then he would write about it on Giant Bomb which he has done so in the past for other leaks. I've actually been burnt a few times by Grubb Podcasts where he states something and it's posted as a rumour by others, only for Grubb to clarify it was either shaky sourcing or speculation, or for me to listen to it myself and realise that.

I'll comment on the other things in separate posts.

Lets start with Hi-Fi Rush.

Mike talks about disliking the "marketing" and Grubb's response is "I disagreed with you at the time but based on what I've heard, it straight up didn't make the money it needed to make" and that's basically all there is to that. Okay, so where did you hear this from? Heard it from Xbox? From Bethesda? From Tango? Heard it from outside of Xbox? NPD?

Hard to make a judgement when I don't know where he heard it from and who he heard it from, for all we know it could be some pencil pusher looking at numbers on a sheet of paper and not thinking about the bigger picture (I.E. Game Pass). Punishing Hi-Fi Rush for Halo Infinite's sales doesn't make sense either, Hi-Fi Rush will be judged on its own metrics, not having to make up for Infinite's losses unless I misinterpreted that part.

There's also a number of reasons why his claim looks a bit shaky.

1. Bethesda themselves said in an internal company wide email that "Hi-Fi Rush is "one of the most successful launches for Bethesda and Xbox in recent years" and in addition to that, John Johanas seems very pleased with its performance. They also announced publicly the 2m players number which they seemed happy with, if they weren't, they wouldn't announce the numbers, they don't announce numbers for everything they release.

2. It looks like it was a success on Steam sales-wise at least, based on it being in the top selling (by revenue) for a number of days, we can also compare its Steam performance to other Bethesda titles in recent history. Hi-Fi Rush has 13,283 reviews on Steam, more than Ghostwire Tokyo at 7,903 and only 3k less than Deathloop at 16,401 so based on Steam alone, Deathloop and Ghostwire look like atomic bombs on PC if Hi-Fi Rush isn't successful.

We can use Steam reviews to get a rock bottom minimum estimate of revenue as well. 13,000 x $30 = $390,000 - Steam's 30% Cut = $273,000.

If Xbox does actually think (although Grubb doesn't say who) that "it didn't make the money it needed to make" then I question what the hell sort of expectations that (whoever) had for it? And those expectations? They need to change them. It would be their fault for having Square Enix expectations.

What sort of sales expectations would they have for a niche rhythm based AA title made by a small team, from a lesser known studio, who has released multiple underperforming titles, which was shadow dropped into a subscription service with zero marketing? They literally made it the perfect subscription drop title, "hey you subscribers, we've just dropped a game straight into your service for you, right now!"

Would Amazon be unhappy if nobody bought a DVD of a TV Show that everyone streamed on Amazon Prime? Lol. I don't buy it, there is no chance Xbox thought Hi-Fi Rush would push large numbers. It launching into Game Pass was literally the main draw. I'm going to label this rumour as really suspect...Simply doesn't make sense...Unless his source is Phil Spencer or Todd Vaughn then, Lol.