Xbox Launch is Biggest in History, But Specifics are Left Out
To little surprise, considering that gaming, in general, has been on an upswing during the pandemic, Xbox is announcing that this is the biggest launch in Xbox history. While this is great news for Microsoft and the Xbox team, the company stops short of telling us the details we want to know.
That detail? How many consoles the company has sold. All the company is saying today is that more new consoles were sold than in any prior generation and that “70 percent of Series X|S consoles are attached to new and existing Xbox Game Pass members”.
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To put this into perspective, Microsoft did tell us with the Xbox One release that more than 1 million units were moved in the first 24 hrs. Meaning, Microsoft sold more than a million consoles on the first day of availability for the Series S and X.
The company is also saying that a total of 3594 different games were played that span four generations. It’s clear that the robust backwards compatibility for the Xbox is a key advantage in the early launch period while gamers wait for additional new titles to land that take advantage of the new features the consoles offer.
The other key stat that is important to understand is that initially, the attach rate for Game Pass, is huge for Microsoft. The company says that 7/10 gamers on Xbox during the first 24 hrs were subscribed to the service.
It’s a perfect storm for Microsoft, everyone is stuck at home, they have a solid value offering with the Series S and GamePass, and we are heading into the winter months for many countries around the globe. It’s good to hear that consoles are selling well, it’s unfortunate that we don’t know the finer details.