South of Midnight reaches over 1 million players less than a month after launch.

How is this tracked? There's about 70k total tracked?
Can you go onto Xbox console and check it from there or is it different from PS?

Yeah, it is in the Xbox app. 15% of people who played the game have completed it.

It is a secret achievement so putting it in spoiler tag

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With most people trying this game "for free" on gamepass and not buying it, be it on Steam or Xbox, it means it's a huge bomb for Microsoft.
If they have to use the player engagement metric to pad their numbers, then it's a certified flop.
 
Decent game - no more than a 7 from me (maybe slightly less). Definitely one and done, won't touch again.

That's the trouble though - if it takes 100 folk 5 years (don't know if true - just something I read above) to make such a game, the industry is in big trouble. That is not sustainable.
 
Cool game. Enjoyed it.

Also that 100 dev figure, where is it coming from?

Compulsion games total is 80 employees, as per google. Not all of them would be devs.
 
So the game bombed. I think it's safe to assume at this point that if a dev/publisher announces "players reached" instead of sales the game flopped or underperformed.
 
Literally unbelievable if you look at data points like Steam and Twitch.

There's just no way unless you deploy some deliberately vague definition and metric.
 
Legitimately don't understand who this game was for tbh. The entire premise of this game was niche to begin with and yet they spent years making this game like it was going to be a triple A banger. There's absolutely 0 way that the heads at microsoft and xbox are happy with the results of this and they probably ate a massive loss on this entire game.
 
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Seems bad. Millions upon millions of game pass subscribers could have played the game for "free" and they didn't even try it. Only a small chunk of subscribers even bothered to give it a shot.
 
- in development for around 7 years
- 10 hour long campaign
- middling scores
- 1 million players total
- no mention of actual sales
- 1.5k concurrent max (awful)
- success!!! Suck on that chuds

🙄
I'm tired of being gaslit into thinking this game is anything more than a colossal failure.
 
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'Players' is a term you use when you have crap sales, trying to promote success and high oxygen levels What consistutes a player? downloading the game? bootking it the title screen? playing for more than 2 minutes?

I am sure the shareholders don't know the difference.
 
Well, that's a spin.

I played it on Game Pass like everybody else and liked the soundtrack so much I actually ordered it (the art and music of South of Midnight). The atmosphere is great, the soundtrack very unusual and cool, and the story is dark but good. If you have any connection to the American south I bet you like it even more.

But the gameplay... No, South of Midnight is just not any fun to play. The gameplay loop remains the same throughout the entire game which makes it extremely repetitive to play. I was happy you could skip the combat, though, which means they likely knew how dull it was.
 
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For comparison hifi Rush had 2m players in a little over a month. So this title is far behind.


A pretty decent comp title too - alternative artstyles and very 2000s game design.

The immediate response would be to say that Gamepass has a lot more titles now and therefore more competition for time - and you could also admit that Gamepass has not significantly grown, or has likely even shrunk since.

But that can't account for a 50% when South of Midnight actually had a marketing campaign compared to HFR's shadow drop. Obviously, the games are different and so have different levels of appeal. Some might point to the culcher warz crap, but the game largely avoided being in that conversation, and even AC Shadows that was managed to not pull catastrophic numbers.

Data indicates that Xbox players are actually playing fewer games compared to the beginning of the gen, which is shocking to some considering the whole flex of Gamepass is access.
 
The spinning companies do (i am guessing for investors) to try and justify all these huge bombas. Relying on fanboys and "journalists" to push a narrative is pathetic on how obvious it is. Perhaps not so obvious for the investors though since i am guessing most of them know nothing about gaming.
 
SOfM was a very satisfying experience for me. A moment of relief between so many games that take 40+ hours to play and others that are endless and never ending.

Great and beautiful graphics, a dark story, and a 12-hour runtime. Sadly the repetitive combat formula, it could have been a fairly well-rounded AA game.
 
I compare South of Midnight to Kena: Bridge of Spirits
That's not just you, developers of SoM were clearly more than just taking inspiration from Kena.

And from looking at South of Midnight, it definitely looks expensive enough to be in the same tier.
Being about 80% done with it, I disagree. In many ways I found Kena's production values hit higher highs, though both are clearly not in the "let's see how much money we can burn" category of typical AAA.
 
Beat it, not a good game. Thank you GamePass
Hell, if you took the time to beat it that sounds like the game was at least enjoyable to continue, lol. At least that's the way I've always looked at it.

I'm genuinely surprised it reached that many players. But I guess good for them?
 
Worth playing if it ever comes to PS5..?

On the subject of Kena, I'd love a sequel to that. The world was great, and Kena herself was a rather endearing character. New Game Plus in that game was great, too. They really changed things up in a way that made it feel different from the initial playthrough.
 
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