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Forums - Microsoft - What was Xbox's last killer app?

Salnax said:

Xbox Game Pass. It's arguably the biggest reason people have bought the Xbox Series X/S. Just compare Gamepass's Subscriber count to the total number of Xbox's sold this gen (30 million vs 35 million).

Besides that, there have been a few games post-2010 that have also moved hardware:

  • Forza Horizon series (2012 onwards) - FH3 passed 10 million players by 2018, FH4 had 24 million players by 2020, and FH5 had 20 million players within seven months. Even if we assume half of these are on PC, that's still a significant exclusive.
  • Grand Theft Auto V (2022) - No really, if you look at the weekly sales of the Xbox Series, they shot up about 80% the week GTA5 got its XS version in May 2023. That technically counts.
  • Minecraft: Xbox 360 Version (2012) - VGChartz has the X360 version of Minecraft alone selling 13 million units. This was due in part to the X360 version getting released just a few months after the main PC release, with a retail release in 2013. Other consoles had to wait more than a year after that to get their versions. Minecraft bundles also seem to have been widespread at the end of the 360's life.
  • PUBG: Battlegrounds - Like with Minecraft, PUBG was one of the world's biggest games, and the Xbox 1 was the first console you could play it on. 9 million people bought it on Xbox 1 before the PS4 version came out.

There are also a few dishonorable mentions I could make (Starfield, Halo 5/Infinite, Rise of the Tomb Raider, etc). And arguably Sea of Thieves, though most of its sales seem to have come after they went multiplatform.

I mainly agree. Forza Horizon has been Xbox's biggest hits this generation in terms of number of players and reception from gamers. Unlike Starfield and Halo Infinite that were divisive among the fanbase. Ignoring games like Call of Duty and Minecraft. 

As far as Xbox Game Pass the figure includes subscribers on PC. Though guessing Xbox is the vast majority of subs. I'm currently subbed at Ultimate, but once it runs out in a couple of years I will probably downgrade to PC Game Pass.



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Yaris



Bite my shiny metal cockpit!

Kyuu said:

Forza Horizon 6, but it mainly sells on PC and will be ported to PS5 soon.

It's going to turn into not so soon pretty soon if they will not announce a release date for it in the next two weeks.  It's not like they really need a PS5 port anytime soon anyway since it will easily sell twice as much on PC as Forza Horizon 5 did.



Chris Hu said:
Kyuu said:

Forza Horizon 6, but it mainly sells on PC and will be ported to PS5 soon.

It's going to turn into not so soon pretty soon if they will not announce a release date for it in the next two weeks.  It's not like they really need a PS5 port anytime soon anyway since it will easily sell twice as much on PC as Forza Horizon 5 did.

How did you gather that? lol. Too optimistic as it isn't even guaranteed to tie FH5 on PC. And we don't have any official numbers anyway.



Kyuu said:
Chris Hu said:

It's going to turn into not so soon pretty soon if they will not announce a release date for it in the next two weeks.  It's not like they really need a PS5 port anytime soon anyway since it will easily sell twice as much on PC as Forza Horizon 5 did.

How did you gather that? lol. Too optimistic as it isn't even guaranteed to tie FH5 on PC. And we don't have any official numbers anyway.

The game has only been out a couple of months, and it already has over half as many steam players tracked on exophase.  So, at this point is pretty much guaranteed to sell more than FH 5 did on PC.  Twice as much is doable unless Clutch actually lives up to the hype.



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Xbox's last killer app, for Playstation: