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[Alinea Analytics] Forza Horizon 5 PS5 port tops 5 million sales, securing $300m in additional sales for Xbox

Alinea Analytics =BS

People bragging about Xbox success because it's games sell great on Playstation = people who don't understand the term fagocitation and who can't see death even when it's cold breath is frozing their noses.
 
Seems like a really poor and shortsighted take to be honest. :messenger_tears_of_joy:

We'll see how the balance sheet turns out once MS Gaming has finished forfeiting its share of the Fortnite money, etc. More games will be sold, sure, but, at the cost of owning a successful platform and the licensing and profits that come with that, we'll see how it balances out. When you look at Sony's numbers, their platform is worth so much more to them than their software, that it's hard to see that being a win in the end (from a numbers standpoint).

I'm sure MS is aware of that as well. It's just that they'd rather be a software company at the end of the day.
 
SportsFan581 said:
Seems like a really poor and shortsighted take to be honest. :messenger_tears_of_joy:

We'll see how the balance sheet turns out once MS Gaming has finished forfeiting its share of the Fortnite money, etc. More games will be sold, sure, but, at the cost of owning a successful platform and the licensing and profits that come with that, we'll see how it balances out. When you look at Sony's numbers, their platform is worth so much more to them than their software, that it's hard to see that being a win in the end (from a numbers standpoint).

I'm sure MS is aware of that as well. It's just that they'd rather be a software company at the end of the day.
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Between tariffs and Ai driving up prices it might be better being software at this point.

One thing I feel gets overlooked is you are going to have a whole new gen of gamers exposed to ms games on ps and switch. If ms say becomes the biggest 3rd party and develops some goodwill with these gamers there could be a time say like 10 years from now go exclusive again and take all their games with them along with the gamers hooked on their games.
 
ZehDon said:
Well, it's possibly the most expensive failure in entertainment history. Concord will be referenced for literally decades for all kinds of reasons.
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Based on what? Unverifiable clickbait that was proven wrong multiple times with actual financial statements? (write-offs on this scale are always impact the bottom line, see recent Bungie write-off).

This point about Concord is hardly better than Alinea's data.
 
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Deserved. It shows that when you put a good game on a stable and healthy platform, it will sell. The entire Horizon and Motorsport combined sales before H5 were around 20 million total. GT7, a single entry in the GT series has nearly reached that number just by itself.

A decent arcade -ish racer was needed on PS5. Not having a Ridge Racer at launch on PS4 and PS5 still rubs me the wrong way.
 
SportsFan581 said:
Seems like a really poor and shortsighted take to be honest. :messenger_tears_of_joy:

We'll see how the balance sheet turns out once MS Gaming has finished forfeiting its share of the Fortnite money, etc. More games will be sold, sure, but, at the cost of owning a successful platform and the licensing and profits that come with that, we'll see how it balances out. When you look at Sony's numbers, their platform is worth so much more to them than their software, that it's hard to see that being a win in the end (from a numbers standpoint).

I'm sure MS is aware of that as well. It's just that they'd rather be a software company at the end of the day.
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This is complete world salad.

MS is now the largest third party publisher on the planet. Their software and IP is much more valuable than their failing platform.

Sonys key strength is their platform and userbase now. Their first party IP has slipped and is no where near as important as their platform, you are correct on that. But comparing two different businesses with different strategies doesn't really work for the statement you are making.

Microsoft wasn't a leading platform holder, they were just a platform holder. It's no where near the same level as ps and clearly never could be.
 
playground-games.png


I can hear this logo.........I wonder how the Fable one will look/sound.
 
ShaiKhulud1989 said:
Based on what? Unverifiable clickbait that was proven wrong multiple times with actual financial statements? (write-offs on this scale are always impact the bottom line, see recent Bungie write-off).

This point about Concord is hardly better than Alinea's data.
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They sunk a fuck ton of money into it and closed it down after a week and gave the 9 people who bought it their cash back. It's certainly up there.
 
hououinkyouma00 said:
Is it more of a win for Xbox or for PlayStation?

Xbox made $300M in additional sale porting one of their biggest games to their competition and further killing their own brand, while Sony did absolutely nothing while still making a 30% cut, essentially securing more Xbox ports, and all while watching their competitor die.


lol
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It's a win for Microsoft, Sony and Playstation, not so much Xbox.
 
Team Andromeda said:
Gone are the days when Playsation fans could say Xbox don't make good games
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Its never been a case that Xbox don't make good games, the issue has always been that they've struggled to create IP that meant much to Playstation gamers.

Forza Horizon being a rare, obvious exception being a high quality franchise in an area where there's no real competition on Playstation.

The real question is what else does MS/Xbox have that fits the same criteria? Because in my opinion most of their GamePass era output doesn't have close to the same appeal.

Being real, just being good doesn't mean its going to shift units.
 
Clear said:
Its never been a case that Xbox don't make good games, the issue has always been that they've struggled to create IP that meant much to Playstation gamers.

Forza Horizon being a rare, obvious exception being a high quality franchise in an area where there's no real competition on Playstation.

The real question is what else does MS/Xbox have that fits the same criteria? Because in my opinion most of their GamePass era output doesn't have close to the same appeal.

Being real, just being good doesn't mean its going to shift units.
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I remember when some would love to to make out that Xbox apparently couldn't make good games or run a studio.
When the real seems to be PlayStation owners couldn't bring themself's to buy an Xbox.
 
pulicat said:
Alienea Analytics is certainly not reliable but Forza Horizon 5 has consistently charted on the PSN top selling chart since it launched on the PS5.
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Actually it is not consistently. It wasn't on charts in October IIRC. But it is often there yes. Especially it was on sale in last few months.
 
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there is no surprise there, most people i knew over the years who were only on Playstation always said "GT is nice but its too sim like, I wish we had forza horizon though"
 
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Alinea should be a banned source for making threads; they know nothing and have already made too many mistakes to be taken seriously.

"""Releasing games on PlayStation did not weaken the Xbox brand — it strengthened it""""pie_tears_joy:
 
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DenchDeckard said:
Remember, revenue doesn't matter. It's about profits. That's what I've learnt on here.

This is like 300 million in profit outside of the small porting cost.
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Both are important for a company this large. Revenue shows growth but of course you need profits as well otherwise your just running an unsustainable business. Investors don't want to see a division that is not growing. Especially in a company as large as MS that is laser focused on AI and is currently having a hard time making any progress there already.
 
DenchDeckard said:
This is complete world salad.

MS is now the largest third party publisher on the planet. Their software and IP is much more valuable than their failing platform.

Sonys key strength is their platform and userbase now. Their first party IP has slipped and is no where near as important as their platform, you are correct on that. But comparing two different businesses with different strategies doesn't really work for the statement you are making.

Microsoft wasn't a leading platform holder, they were just a platform holder. It's no where near the same level as ps and clearly never could be.
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To each their own. Not an intelligent take from my perspective.

The largest third-party publishers are still nothing, literally nothing, in comparison to where the Xbox platform was at (even as the third-place platform) by revenue, market influence, etc. You fail down from being a platform holder to a publisher, not the other way around.

Maybe it'll work out differently, but you've got to assume that MS Gaming revenue will be forever shrinking. Especially, given their track record for managing studios and their mostly miss, occasional hit record as game developers.

I will say that they seem to be doing right by the fans, and keeping the purchases alive as they change gears. So, props to them for that. It's a graceful exit at least.
 
If the sales are so good, why don't MS and Playground confirm? If they want to be seen as the "biggest publisher", then the biggest publisher shouldn't be scared of reporting their software sales to shareholders. It's not like with hardware where we know the reason they stopped reporting that (i.e bad sales).

Also where are the corroborative sources? Can Circana add if this is accurate? Can we get some Famitsu sales figures for the game on PS5 (I'm sure those actually exist, you'd just have to comb a lot of charts)? UK? Spain? GFK maybe? This shouldn't be that hard.

SportsFan581 said:
The largest third-party publishers are still nothing, literally nothing, in comparison to where the Xbox platform was at (even as the third-place platform) by revenue, market influence, etc. You fail down from being a platform holder to a publisher, not the other way around.
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Maybe during the 360 days, this was true? The past 5 years? If we're talking about genuine mindshare and not manufactured astroturfing and channel-flooding to pump the brand name in news cycles 24/7, I'd say several 3P have absolutely outclassed the Xbox hardware platform in terms of market influence and net profits. Epic Games (Fortnite), Roblox, Take-Two (GTA Online, GTA5, GTA6, RDR2), From Software (Elden Ring, spawning a whole genre of Soulsborne imitators in general) etc. have had much more real & substantive influence on the market than the Xbox brand.

Now I take it your argument was about how MS going 3P publisher is a step down from them being a platform holder, and that's somewhat true. That's always the case for a while when talking about companies which used to be platform holders and then transition to not being platform holders. I don't think that prevents MS from being successful as a 3P publisher, though. It will require a hell of a lot more effort than they are currently putting in, though. Their problem ATM is they're pushing quantity over quality. Quantity might help boost the revenue forecasts, but what impact are the games actually having?

Let's look at Obsidian as an example. They're a workhorse, yes, but I'd argue they would do better with fewer, yet more polished & refined releases. Avowed kind of had a brief moment and then was quickly forgotten by the majority. The Outer Worlds 2 got completely overshadowed and some people probably don't even realize the game was released! There's a rumor saying they've got four titles in development ATM, and that'd be great for them if they didn't have a habit of releasing a bunch of games that either get ignored or get forgotten shortly after launch, mainly because they are "just good", but not enough to stand out in their genre or market.

I think that gets harder and harder to justify funding when you've got a more prominent Obsidian in Bethesda right next door. If you're getting pinchy on funding, would you rather split $100 million between 4x Obsidian games that might do something (or not) & a new Fallout, or would you rather cut the Obsidian funding to $20 million so Bethesda can put that extra $30 million towards a game guaranteed to do some big numbers and generate large returns?
 
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