I was looking over the VGChartz table that I linked in my previous post, and I noticed something interesting.
I used VGChartz's Tie-Ratio tab for my cost-benefit analysis of Game Pass, but gaming system Tie-Ratios aren't the only data available to us. Tie-Ratio is the number of games sold for every console. To calculate a Tie Ratio, you naturally must know: 1. the number of games sold, and 2. the number of consoles sold. And VGChartz have, helpfully, broken those numbers out separately.
And if you switch from Tie-Ratio to just look at the hardware numbers, you can see something interesting.
Do you see it? How about I remove the handhelds from the list, and show only the living-room consoles:
Globally, five of the top ten selling consoles of all time are PlayStations. Nintendo clocks in at #2 with the Switch, #5 with the Wii, and #8 with the NES.
XBox's best-selling console was the XBox 360, which sits at #7. The XBox One sits at #10. And the current XBox Series X|S consoles clock in at #15, just ahead of the original XBox, which is #16.
Looking
at the units sold, it looks like Microsoft have spent four hardware
generations growing their XBox business from 24.7 million units globally
to 28.7 million units globally. PlayStation 5 isn't selling
like hotcakes, either, but Sony are still selling twice as many consoles as
Microsoft. The XBox One was a console which performed so poorly that even Phil Spencer admits that they got their asses carved off, cooked, and served back to them... but even the XBox One sold twice as many units at the XBox Series X|S has to this point.
This is what futility looks like. Microsoft have spent 23 years and tens of billions of dollars, all in service of failing to grow their video game business at all. The XBox brand peaked with the XBox 360, and have declined dramatically since. They are four console generations into this thing, and it looks like they're going to end their fourth generation right back where they ended their first.
When Phil Spencer talks about how the XBox business needs to show growth? This is the sort of thing they're looking at.
Clearly, Game Pass was a "hail Mary" play. Spending a hundred billion dollars acquiring studios who would make games for Games Pass was already a desperation move. And, very clearly, it has failed.
 |
| Yes, the situation looks even worse when you look at the software sales. |