With Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 officially out, one’d expect it to pull in some pretty nice numbers, considering these two games are considered classics. However, that is far from the truth, as it seems their day-one Game Pass launch has botched their numbers on other platforms.
As Steam’s numbers show—and we all know that numbers never lie—Game Pass peaked at a little over 2,200 players on its launch day (thanks SteamDB). Suffice it to say that this is less-than-stellar, as it also implies poor sales overall. If we go by Steam’s reviews and the one review in every 30 players method, the game sold about 12,000 copies on Steam, give or take. Though that’s an estimate, the player count really doesn’t help its case.
And we could call it a gaming tragedy, one of many, if it weren’t part of a broader new pattern that has emerged alongside Xbox’s day-one Game Pass launches. It appears that almost every game launched on Game Pass at the same time as other platforms, its numbers are significantly botched, both in terms of concurrent players and copies sold.
Game Pass borderline kills game releases with its day-one launch
If a game launches on Game Pass and other storefronts simultaneously, its numbers go down. This is a plain and simple fact of life. The only way they wouldn’t be is if it’s a game that shadow-dropped or was too big to not sell well across all stores, such as the Oblivion Remaster, which Bethesda launched everywhere at once (without so much as mentioning it coming).
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 presents one example, whereas Avowed tells an even worse story. That game comes from a big, first-party, reputable studio that produced numerous well-selling games in the past. From Fallout: New Vegas to Outer Worlds, Obsidian is by no means a stranger to good sales. Even its Pillars of Eternity franchise drew in a ton of players across all platforms, and particularly Steam, which is no surprise given how much emphasis Obsidian puts on RPGs (a traditionally heavily PC-oriented genre).
However, Avowed peaked at less than 20,000 players on Steam during its heyday. It has some 10,000 reviews on Valve’s store, implying 300,000 copies sold. A good number, but far from what Obsidian usually achieves, which is more often than not in the six figures.
Despite this, the game bragged about having a ton of “players,” and was labelled a “success.” There were even claims it had nearly six million players total across Steam, Microsoft Store, and Xbox. Given that “only” 300,000 or so of those were on Steam, we can safely assume most of the remaining five and change million were on Game Pass, enjoying the game for “free” as part of their monthly subscription.
Yet another huge game, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, also attained some four million players according to claims, but only ever peaked at 12,000 on Steam, selling an estimated 450,000 copies.
The numbers speak volumes here and imply that Game Pass completely wrecks games’ sales as, logically, people prefer not to pay full prices (up to $80 these days) when they can access a nearly limitless library of games for the low, low price of 15 bucks per month.
So what’s the solution?
In this era of live services and subscriptions, everything is moving toward some sort of reduced product ownership. If stuff continues down this path, we might start getting Game Pass only releases, where we need to be subscribed to access any given game.
This is a grim and dark prediction, though, and I think the solution would be for developers to simply stop putting their games on Game Pass day one. Releasing a game over there isn’t bad in and of itself, but even a few days on the active market could help to generate a ton of sales. Players who really want to play your title will do so and not wait for a Game Pass launch.
So long as these services exist (and this includes every subscription-based service, not just Game Pass), we will continue seeing such phenomena. Even outside of Game Pass, we saw Assassin’s Creed: Shadows plummet in sales but get a ton of players via Ubisoft’s own subscription service, meaning the issue is quite far-reaching.
Who knows where these things will end up? Maybe Stop Killing Games will have an impact?
What do you think, Destructoid? Should games launch on Game Pass day one? Is Game Pass, alongside other subscription services, killing game releases and sales? Let me know below.
