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Kotaku UK Rumor: Xbox One, Windows 10, Halo 5, & Minecraft notably below expectations

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Kayant

Member
Ok now having time to fully read the article let's see -

With Minecraft
“Without Steam, without other platforms, it was just painful,” says another. “The Windows Store is a giant disaster. It’s on fire. 98% of PC copies of Rise of the Tomb Raider, a flagship Windows 10 game, were bought on Steam. The same is true for Minecraft. That hurt us, too. The store’s a mess; the number of people who couldn’t even install the game from the Microsoft store was… significant."
Given the whole context of this quote was about the store it's fairly safe to say they were talking about the Win 10 version of Minecraft and not it's overall performance.
“Let’s be honest – we make our projections based on a series of assumptions,” reflects a former employee who worked closely with Microsoft. “There are supposed to be 2x as many Xboxes out there as there are right now. There are supposed to be 2x as many Windows 10 installs as there currently are. So now, when we look at how much money Legends could make in the free-to-play universe, you have to halve it. Because we can only reach half the audience that was projected.”
I don't know numbers at the top of my head but they would be making predictions based on X360 performance and more than likely essentially on markets like US/UK were they had a big lead with the X360. So realistically at the very least they would be predicting being the market leader again in these markets as well as possibly increasing their marketshare due to things like their entertainment plans, combined consoles on market. We also have to remember they were also banking hard on entertainment being a big thing there is a reason why majority of their reveal was "TV TV TV", the creation of Xbox Entertainment Studios. If you add those things you can see why their predictions would be a lot higher than where the XB1 is estimated to be those days(19-21m) I don't know about being 2x but definitely a lot more than it is atm.
One source reckons that the final decision was probably made about a week before, as Microsoft started doing its fiscal planning, deciding what products and studios to fund and not. Lionhead was not the only first-party studio that was having problems. Something had to give.

“I reckon [Phil Spencer] feels bad about Lionhead, but I think for him, he has to run all of Microsoft Studios as a business,” they say. “First-party studios isn’t doing so well. Halo 5 is a big miss, versus projections. Minecraft is a big miss, versus projections. Compared to either one of those, Lionhead is practically a rounding error. But I think if your division is under-performing, you have to go to your boss with something on the altar.”
The main problem here is the way sources are referenced to. In the beginning we have
After Milo and Kate, Molyneux and a large team of others at Lionhead were working on something called Project Opal – a sprawling project so unfocused that even the other designers working on it had no idea what it was actually supposed to be in the end, according to some people who were with the studio at the time. (Due to non-disclosure and redundancy agreements, the people who spoke to me for this article did not wish to be identified.)
That makes it seems like the sources for this article are many and are not always from Lionhead as seen by
reflects a former employee who worked closely with Microsoft.
so this information doesn't all come from only Lionhead employees the difficulty is knowing where the source is coming from at each point because of how they are referred to.

Nothing in here seems too hard to believe it could be close to the truth when you look at things more closely. Like with Win 10 installs you only have to see they overly-aggressive actions they been doing for months to see what is said here could be close to the truth.

I was saying for months Halo 5 was way below expectations by them. So no rumor on that part!

All of this is true, as far as I know.

I would even say Xbox being at half of their projections is generous, rather than conservative.
Thatitis.gif
I wonder if people would put more believe in you guys.
 

Moonstone

Member
There has to be more to Minecraft failing to met expectations than just game sales. Like licensing and products failing to hit or something to that affect. Can't be game sales alone.

Granted they probably paid a bit too much for the IP and Mojang.

I'd guess they didn't buy Minecraft in the first place because it prints money .
I assume it was meant to be a big push for the W10 store.

But the store version is still a Beta (1,5 years after they bought it) and it is also years behind the java version. This could be the reason for the "mess". I guess sales on the other platforms are fine.
 
How many W10 PC can run a graphically intensive game?

There's way more pcs with a hd7850 or above out there than there are ps4s or xbox one's

There's something like 14 million pcs with a gtx 970 or above out there according to amd's numbers , and those are higher end gpus with 3x the performance

the lower end stuff is a much bigger market on pc
 

jelly

Member
Just for comparison.

In 2007 Halo 3 sold 4.82 million in the US. NPD.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/npd-2007-game-earnings-nearly-18-billion-halo-3-sells-482-million/1100-6184847/

Microsoft said this about Halo 4

'In the United States Halo 4 became the best-selling Microsoft Studios title for sales counted during respective launch years'

Which means Halo 4 sold more than Halo 3 during the last few months of the year they released but obviously didn't have the legs Halo 3 had to reach 14/15 million sold.
 

Kayant

Member
Ah, exactly. Thanx.

Hmmm actually looking back am not 100% sure because the thing about it being a big miss versus expectations is from another quote maybe another source? It's hard to tell but there are two things here -

Minecraft Win 10 edition sales = disappointing according to one source

Minecraft expectations = Big miss according to other source?

Had to say if these two are truly linked and are only about Win 10 version but given the way the second quote is from about first party studios I would say overall is about Minecraft in general so am I likely wrong in my initial assumption.
 

anothertech

Member
Is today a 'take a sht on Microsoft' day??

Halo5 underperformed
Windows 10 underperformed
Windows store sucks
Tomb raider couldn't sell
Halo 5 not coming to PC
Ms failed in NPD

All right on The front page today. Good Zod it's sad. I mean it's all true I'm sure, but it seems relentless from so many sources!
 

Widge

Member
Isn't the Win10 version of Minecraft essentially Pocket Edition?

It's obviously great on mobile but there is no way you'd want to use that on PC.
 

leeh

Member
So why is it being said to have undersold then?
Maybe the source doesn't know and is releasing false information? I doubt a Lionhead employee knows accurate internal projections for anything outside his work stream and projects he works in.

I don't understand why people are taking this as gospel truth.
 
It would be strange to say how many copies the game has sold in total when people were questioning if it took 3 months to do a million?

Does digital not going or something? Strange indeed lol

Even if you account for digital, that does not explain the discrepancy. I'm sure other posters are content with dismissing people as haters or SonyGAF but I'll show you the calculations to see why I've come to the conclusions I did.

First, XB1 games don't sell their majority in the rest of the world. The XB1 is heavily skewed towards the US and UK, and in particular this gen, the US.

Second, Halo has always been a US dominated series. So with those two things said, let's see thr numbers.

Halo 5 sold 1.791 million at retail by the end of December. Assuming a 30% digital ratio in the first month and a 20% for the months after gives us 2.25 million sales in the U.S.

Do you see why 5 million seems unlikely now? Halo 5 would have to sell more in the ROTW then US for the number to be sold-through.

Even if you bumped up the Halo 5 number to 2.5 million, that's still a 50/50 split, which js incredibly unlikely.

XB1 games don't sell 50/50 US/World. They are usually 60/40 at the least. And on top of that, an incredibly US centric IP to boost?

Yea, I'm not buying it unleas Frankie comes back and confirms it was sold-through numbers.
 

leeh

Member
Even if you account for digital, that does not explain the discrepancy. I'm sure other posters are content with dismissing people as haters or SonyGAF but I'll show you the calculations to see why I've come to the conclusions I did.

First, XB1 games don't sell their majority in the rest of the world. The XB1 is heavily skewed towards the US and UK, and in particular this gen, the US.

Second, Halo has always been a US dominated series. So with those two things said, let's see thr numbers.

Halo 5 sold 1.791 million at retail by the end of December. Assuming a 30% digital ratio in the first month and a 20% for the months after gives us 2.25 million sales in the U.S.

Do you see why 5 million seems unlikely now? Halo 5 would have to sell more in the ROTW then US for the number to be sold-through.

Even if you bumped up the Halo 5 number to 2.5 million, that's still a 50/50 split, which js incredibly unlikely.

XB1 games don't sell 50/50 US/World. They are usually 60/40 at the least. And on top of that, an incredibly US centric IP to boost?

Yea, I'm not buying it unleas Frankie comes back and confirms it was sold-through numbers.
So now we're doubting people who officially work for the company and provide information while making fun of his maths?

Come on GAF.
 

leeh

Member
Perhaps read the post. Frankie didn't say sold. He just provided a number.

Come on GAF.
Sold means sold. He commented based on people discussing how much it sold. He's not going to provide that number if it was sold to retailers because it would be totally out of context.

I've had this one before on here when PR stated 'sold' and people were saying it clearly wasn't sold through when it was.
 

Kayant

Member
Maybe the source doesn't know and is releasing false information? I doubt a Lionhead employee knows accurate internal projections for anything outside his work stream and projects he works in.

I don't understand why people are taking this as gospel truth.
That source may or maybe not be a Lionhead employee all sources in this article were not from Lionhead.
 
Sold means sold. He commented based on people discussing how much it sold. He's not going to provide that number if it was sold to retailers because it would be totally out of context.

I've had this one before on here when PR stated 'sold' and people were saying it clearly wasn't sold through when it was.

Sorry, he didn't say sold or sold-through or any variation of that when dropping the number. If he comes here or somewhere else and says that it sold-through 5 million, I'll believe him. I have no intention of doubting him.

But I'm not willing to dismiss my reasoning based on a possibility.

Especially when we have US numbers. The strongest market for Halo. And the rest just doesn't add up.
 

wapplew

Member
So now we're doubting people who officially work for the company and provide information while making fun of his maths?

Come on GAF.


We live in an era where MS PR state Halo 5 record breaking launch in history but NPD and UK Charts tell a different story. People who officially work for the company and provide information too.
 

leeh

Member
Sorry, he didn't say sold or sold-through or any variation of that when dropping the number. If he comes here or somewhere else and says that it sold-through 5 million, I'll believe him. I have no intention of doubting him.

But I'm not willing to dismiss my reasoning based on a possibility.

Especially when we have US numbers. The strongest market for Halo. And the rest just doesn't add up.

Can you blame them?
We live in an era where MS PR state Halo 5 record breaking launch in history but NPD and UK Charts tell a different story. People who officially work for the company and provide information too.

He commented directly to someone saying that it took 3 months to get to a million was nonsense. That 3 months to a million is a sold number, then he replied with the actual number. That's common sense. Your reading between lines which aren't there.

Well all your maths isn't adding up then, because an official rep who works for the company has stated 5 million sold in 3 months. He's not going to say something is ridiculous and then provide sold to retail numbers when everyone is discussing sold. He's been on GAF for a long time.
 
He commented directly to someone saying that it took 3 months to get to a million was nonsense. That 3 months to a million is a sold number, then he replied with the actual number. That's common sense. Your reading between lines which aren't there.

Well all your maths isn't adding up then, because an official rep who works for the company has stated 5 million sold in 3 months. He's not going to say something is ridiculous and then provide sold to retail numbers when everyone is discussing sold. He's been on GAF for a long time.

Sorry, I'm just going to agree to disagree. I've laid out my reasoning several times very clearly. If it's wrong, Frankie can say so and I'll believe him.

But I have no intention of lapping up a number that seems so inconsistent with the data we have. Especially when it comes to Microsoft and how confusing the terminology can be to begin with (sold vs. sold through).

It's a simple clarificafion.
 

leeh

Member
Sorry, I'm just going to agree to disagree. I've laid out my reasoning several times very clearly. If it's wrong, Frankie can say so and I'll believe him.

But I have no intention of lapping up a number that seems so inconsistent with the data we have. Especially when it comes to Microsoft and how confusing the terminology can be to begin with (sold vs. sold through).

It's a simple clarificafion.
Well he has the actual number, you have a number derived from guesses based on small samples.

I've read your reasoning and it's all based on guesswork. I don't get why you think he'd lie and provide sold to retailer numbers. He's been on here for a long time, he knows what he's replying to and he knows he'd get bludgeoned for it.
 
Well he has the actual number, you have a number derived from guesses based on small samples.

I've read your reasoning and it's all based on guesswork. I don't get why you think he'd lie and provide sold to retailer numbers. He's been on here for a long time, he knows what he's replying to and he knows he'd get bludgeoned for it.

This is where your missing my point. We don't have small samples.

We have numbers for the US (the biggest market) and even some UK (second biggest).

The only guesswork is trying to figure out how a US centric IP on a console that sells primarily in the US is achieving more sales in the ROTW.

And I don't think it's lying to provide retailer numbers. That's an important metric for a company. But different from sold-through.

Espeically if you look at the thread we are in.

Overshipping retail coincides with the conclusion that Halo 5 was notably below expectations. But hell, we've had insiders tell us that Halo 5 was below expectations way before this too.
 

leeh

Member
This is where your missing my point. We don't have small samples.

We have numbers for the US (the biggest market) and even some UK (second biggest).

The only guesswork is trying to figure out how a US centric IP on a console that sells primarily in the US is achieving more sales in the ROTW.

And I don't think it's lying to provide retailer numbers. That's an important metric for a company. But different from sold-through.

Espeically if you look at the thread we are in.

Overshipping retail coincides with the conclusion that Halo 5 was notably below expectations. But hell, we've had insiders tell us that Halo 5 was below expectations way befoee this too.
You have ball park figures for the a large portion of sales in the US, and the same large portion with the UK.

I love how 'insiders' have more weight to you than an actual official rep to the company who's very trusted around here.
 
You have ball park figures for the a large portion of sales in the US, and the same large portion with the UK.

I love how 'insiders' have more weight to you than an actual official rep to the company who's very trusted around here.

It's not ballpark figures. We have precise retail numbers and even a precise first month digital ratio.

And well, it's not that I trust insiders more. But they clarify and Frankie hasn't clarified. And secondly, what they said doesn't go against whatever Frankie said. Frankie gave a number, they are talking about expectations.
 
Sorry, he didn't say sold or sold-through or any variation of that when dropping the number. If he comes here or somewhere else and says that it sold-through 5 million, I'll believe him. I have no intention of doubting him.

But I'm not willing to dismiss my reasoning based on a possibility.

Especially when we have US numbers. The strongest market for Halo. And the rest just doesn't add up.

Yeah; I agree with your assessment. And while it's not necessarily fair to bundle Frank in with Larry Hyrb and Aaron Greenberg, I really don't trust MS PR this gen. It feels like every time their comments have to be de-constructed and cross-analysed before we get to the actual truth.
 
I'm sure Minecraft is doing fine, but I still don't understand that purchase. It will take years to get that money back. Somebody compared it to the Star Wars purchase, which just shows what a ridiculous amount MS used to acquire the game.

Now how many new IPs and AAA games could you make with that much money? I think investing in your brand and console would've been much wiser. Now we are (again) stuck in the Gears/Halo/Forza free fall, just like at the end of last gen.
 

Mendax

Member
..hardly the case, given that Activision's practically turned call of duty into fucking halo for the last two games. No, I don't think that's the reason.

meh, science fiction was a thing before halo. And cod is still "kinda" realistic as opposed to halo's fantasy
 
Yes, no other games are announced.

The situation is just as bad as it was last gen. They could've used all the money they spent on buying exclusives and Minecraft to new games. They didn't. I know Sony puts out a lot of mediocre games like The Order, but at least they try. They never rely on the same few franchises from one gen to another. MS doesn't do that.
 

gamz

Member
I'm sure Minecraft is doing fine, but I still don't understand that purchase. It will take years to get that money back. Somebody compared it to the Star Wars purchase, which just shows what a ridiculous amount MS used to acquire the game.

Now how many new IPs and AAA games could you make with that much money? I think investing in your brand and console would've been much wiser. Now we are (again) stuck in the Gears/Halo/Forza free fall, just like at the end of last gen.

Dude, 2.5B off shore money with little to no taxes is a drop in the bucket for the prestige of owning Minecraft. How many new IP's and AAA will be Minecraft? None.
 

geordiemp

Member
..hardly the case, given that Activision's practically turned call of duty into fucking halo for the last two games. No, I don't think that's the reason.

Maybe Activision turning Bo3 into a fast paced Halo is a reason.

BO3 took a bit of Halo and a bit of Destiny and merged it into COD and it worked for them clearly.

Maybe Bo3 does halo PVP better than halo did once they added air combat, boost jumping and wall running.
 

ramparter

Banned
Next Windows 10 update prompt:

"Windows 10 is coming. You can't stop it. Accept it. Welcome Windows 10 into your PC. Your files are right where you left them." x*

(Ok) (Yes)

*Clicking the x welcomes Windows 10 into your hard drive.
The problem with windows 10 was exactly that imo. Pushed it so much, users felt they had to defend themselves and keep their old OS everyway they could. MS should have just let the option be there and find other ways to drive people - like you know free software and other promotions for W10 only users.
 
Dude, 2.5B off shore money with little to no taxes is a drop in the bucket for the prestige of owning Minecraft. How many new IP's and AAA will be Minecraft? None.

It still just one game/franchise and no matter how popular, it will run into a wall eventually. And if it's such a small amount of money, how about investing in your console business? They have been talking about it since last gen, yet here we are. Remakes of the same series, new versions yearly and a spinoff of Forza (although a good one). Patience, that's what they've been asking for about 7 or 8 years now. Just a terrible job running the console division, if you see how well they were doing with 360 at the start of the gen.
 

c0de

Member
The situation is just as bad as it was last gen. They could've used all the money they spent on buying exclusives and Minecraft to new games. They didn't. I know Sony puts out a lot of mediocre games like The Order, but at least they try. They never rely on the same few franchises from one gen to another. MS doesn't do that.

Thing is, money alone doesn't help. You need to hire the right guys in the industry and that is a limited resource every company has to fight. Not only Sony and MS but all studios that make games.
Remember when Corinne Yu went to Sony? Well, now she is gone there, too, but these are the people you have to get. And which are a potential lost. Cort is also gone now to Google, leaving Sony. Money can't replace that at all. The image that just throwing money into a project is totally wrong.
 

SMG

Member
It's plain pigheaded stubbornness now how much they actively push against putting Halo on PC
It's sad, I'm a big Halo fan and might never play 5, and knowing how flighty MS is this whole PC and Xbox together philosophy will be long gone by the time 6 comes out.
 

RexNovis

Banned
Guys questioning the metric of an otherwise unspecified sales figure is not beyond the pale. Especially when said figure doesn't align with prexisitng data we know to be true.

Questioning whether the 5 million is sold in or sold through is not only reasonable but, given what we already know, appropriate. Especially when we have other highly reliable insiders making statements that could conflict with that figure.

Those of you attacking and dismissing people for being skeptical are embarassing yourselves. Calm down and look at the context.
 

kinoki

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.
Which projections?
Day 0 before the announce?

Looking at the NPD today: do you think that the sales align with the most recent projections for this month?
 
For anyone thinking halo is at 5 million sold through is beyond delusional

You choosing to ignore the developer of the game saying it sold 5 million copies and creating your own narritive is delusional. What with the when the story doesn't go people way they have to create another thing to downplay. We finally got sold figures I'm pretty sure Frankie wouldn't come here to talk about shipped figures. That's was only three months sale I would think that number would be bigger now.
 

Trup1aya

Member
Yeah I don't understand people claiming spencer is the 2nd coming of Christ and will fix all of Xbox problems. He was a key decision maker too for the original vision

He wasn't. He executes plans. Even if he was, do you think adamant opposition from him would have changed MS course of action? You think companies operate on consensus?
 
Oh, come on guys. The guy was using known retail data to extrapolate LTD sales, stinkles comes out, say a number directly addressing this math and you try to twisted that as shipped using the same math?

Yeah, he didn't said sold, but there's a little thing called context. Don't hold onto the lack of a word just to fit a narrative. And unlike the article source stinkles is not afraid to be named.

Unless you think Stinkles is flat out lying.
Ok now having time to fully read the article let's see -

With Minecraft

Given the whole context of this quote was about the store it's fairly safe to say they were talking about the Win 10 version of Minecraft and not it's overall performance.

I don't know numbers at the top of my head but they would be making predictions based on X360 performance and more than likely essentially on markets like US/UK were they had a big lead with the X360. So realistically at the very least they would be predicting being the market leader again in these markets as well as possibly increasing their marketshare due to things like their entertainment plans, combined consoles on market. We also have to remember they were also banking hard on entertainment being a big thing there is a reason why majority of their reveal was "TV TV TV", the creation of Xbox Entertainment Studios. If you add those things you can see why their predictions would be a lot higher than where the XB1 is estimated to be those days(19-21m) I don't know about being 2x but definitely a lot more than it is atm.
The main problem here is the way sources are referenced to. In the beginning we have
That makes it seems like the sources for this article are many and are not always from Lionhead as seen by so this information doesn't all come from only Lionhead employees the difficulty is knowing where the source is coming from at each point because of how they are referred to.

Nothing in here seems too hard to believe it could be close to the truth when you look at things more closely. Like with Win 10 installs you only have to see they overly-aggressive actions they been doing for months to see what is said here could be close to the truth.




Thatitis.gif
I wonder if people would put more believe in you guys.

The article paints two pictures:

One is that MGS is in financial trouble because their sales are well bellow expectations, even their big hitters are underperforming.

The other is that xbone and win store are failed platforms and they couldn't see those platforms making the game viable.

So, when the math was made they decided to cancel the game.

I dunno, sales target are an obvious strong reason to cancel a game, but I don't think it would be the only one. Phil himself implied when the game missed the spring showcase that he felt quality just wasn't there. The game would miss the launch date for the nTh time, and Phil also said that he wasn't too happy with the engagement figures he was reading from tests. Fable Legends was born out of a Push made by the bad Phil, one that blew in Ms' faces, and that the good phil is trying to get away from.

Of course xbox is underperforming, I don't know if the store is underperforming. It's not doing great, no argument there, but they couldn't possibly have big targets for it considering how there's little to no great content there and Tomb Raider was just the first high profile game they released, not to mention the state of the store.

I mean, Ms knew the issues the store had, there was plenty of feedback in the insider preview, they knew the store lacks features because they were already planning to add those features when the store would be merged with the xbone's, they know there was no content and they knew Tomb Raider was going to be the first high profile game, because to support AAA games on the store windows needed one update that was brought to consumers in last November. There's no way any sane reason would think that the store will sell games like hotcakes back then.

Fable Legends not meeting their expectations are a much more likely reason for its cancellation than just Ms giving up because they realized their platforms are failed just a few months ago. Sounds to me the ex employee is just looking for someone else to blame.

As for the guys you quote, i have no idea who they are, are they in a position to know what they are saying?
 

leeh

Member
Oh, come on guys. The guy was using known retail data to extrapolate LTD sales, stinkles comes out, say a number directly addressing this math and you try to twisted that as shipped using the same math?

Yeah, he didn't said sold, but there's a little thing called context. Don't hold onto the lack of a word just to fit a narrative. And unlike the article source stinkles is not afraid to be named.
Couldn't agree more.
 
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