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Xbox Game Pass

Update 08/17/2021

Added soon to Xbox Game Pass

Humankind (PC) - Available today Need for Speed ​​Heat (Cloud) - Available today Star Wars Battlefront II ( Cloud) - Available today Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (Cloud) - Available today Recompile (Xbox, Cloud, PC) - Available from 19/08 Train Sim World 2 (Xbox, Cloud, PC) - Available from 19/08 Twelve Minutes (Xbox, Cloud, PC) - Available from 08/19 Psychonauts 2 (Xbox, Cloud, PC) - Available from 08/25 Myst (Xbox, Cloud, PC) - Available from 08/25 To subscribe to Xbox Game Pass just access this page, Microsoft often guarantees months at one euro to try it out.

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93% Of ‘Hades’ Box Sales Are On PlayStation, Raising An Xbox Game Pass Question

Hades

Supergiant

A whole lot of people are discovering the magic of Hades for the first time with the game’s release onto consoles with a new box copy, and its arrival on Xbox Game Pass at the same time. Last year’s GOTY contender/winner-in-many-circles is a joy to play, but some numbers about how it’s performing are…interesting, to say the least.

In the UK, we have data that shows that 70% of Hades box sales are on PS5, and 23% are on PS4 with 7% on Xbox.

So, 93% of Hades sales being on PlayStation has naturally become ammo loaded into a console wars machine gun being fired toward Xbox. Of course, the obvious answer is “well duh, Hades is out on Game Pass.” But it’s a little more complicated than that, and probably worth exploring.

Microsoft has previously said that one advantage of Game Pass is the potential for significant sales of a game. And we have seen this happen at times. Rage Squid's Descenders reported a sales increase of 5x after appearing on Game Pass. Microsoft reports that Game Pass players spend 20% more time gaming, play 30% more total game in general and explore more different genres. All of this can lead to increased sales for games that may not have otherwise been discovered.

Hades

Supergiant

There’s also the fact that Microsoft is…paying for these games to be on Game Pass. So for instance, if Microsoft paid Hades an amount that is comparable to those 93% of Sony sales, then Supergiant shouldn’t really care where the money is coming from.

But…is that the case? We simply don’t know, and I don’t think it’s necessarily true that every game benefits from a Game Pass release. We don’t have all the data for every title, but I just finished writing an article where People Can Fly hasn’t made any royalties from Outriders, given that it has not recouped its development costs. They estimate sales should have bridged that gap right now, but Square Enix launched the game on Game Pass, cutting out many potential Xbox sales in favor of playerbase acquisition.

But Outriders, for instance, is a game with no season passes, no DLC, no microtransactions, so once you get it on Game Pass, you have the whole thing. Hades too. But that’s different than say, Destiny 2 launching a new expansion on Game Pass, as even if that’s “free” you still have past DLC and season passes and a microtransaction store that can earn money from Game Pass players.

In short, it’s complicated. While I agree that the numbers don’t look great in the case of Hades, we simply don’t have enough information to know if the Game Pass deal is helping or hurting it. Certainly more people are playing it, but without knowing the specifics of how much Microsoft paid for it, it’s hard to tell the end result, as it is for…really any Game Pass game.

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