Microsoft recently released their earnings report for quarter three, revealing that their profits for Xbox content and services have increased a whopping 34% this quarter. Despite this, they claim to have never made a profit from selling the consoles themselves, meaning most of this profit is made from the sales of games. This led ManySpins to investigate exactly how satisfied gamers are with the games they purchase from Xbox.
Using a list of the 20 best-selling Xbox One games, they used Metacritic’s user score to find out exactly what players thought of the games they had purchased. Metacritic’s user scores range from 0-10, with higher scores indicating better reviews from the gaming community.
Xbox One’s best-selling games that disappointed fans most:
| Xbox One Game | Number of Copies Sold Worldwide | User Score (Metacritic) | Number of copies potentially wasted | |
| #1 | PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds | 8 million | 49% | 4,080,000 |
| #2 | Call of Duty: Black Ops III | 7.37 million | 46% | 3,979,800 |
| #3 | Call of Duty: WWII | 6.23 million | 43% | 3,551,100 |
| #4 | Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare | 4.79 million | 38% | 2,969,800 |
| #5 | Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare | 5.22 million | 55% | 2,349,000 |
| #6 | Star Wars Battlefront | 4.14 million | 45% | 2,277,000 |
| #7 | Assassin’s Creed Unity | 3.58 million | 45% | 1,969,000 |
| #8 | Grand Theft Auto V | 8.72 million | 79% | 1,831,200 |
| #9 | FIFA 17 | 3.71 million | 52% | 1,780,800 |
| #10 | Halo 5: Guardians | 4.92 million | 64% | 1,771,200 |
ManySpins can reveal the game with the most copies potentially wasted is PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. The game has sold a total of 8 million copies so far, but with only 49% of players happy with their purchase, around 4 million copies have been wasted.
Call of Duty games claim spots 2 to 5 of the most wasted games, with a grand total of nearly 13 million copies wasted between the four games. COD is known for being expensive as part of Xbox’s triple A games, and as there are now 24 COD games, it is easy to see how Microsoft could be more focussed on profits rather than quality gaming.
Coming sixth is Star Wars Battlefront, and with just 45% of players happy with the game that means an estimated 2.2 million copies went to waste. Eighth is Grand Theft Auto V with approximately 1.8 million copies wasted, followed by FIFA 17 in ninth (estimated 1.7 million copies wasted).
Rounding up the top 10 most disappointing Xbox One games is Halo 5: Guardians. Selling a grand total of 4.9 million copies and with a score of 64%, around 1.7 million copies of this game were potentially wasted on unhappy customers.
Kevin Roos, expert from ManySpins.com said: “Many of Xbox’s games are £50-60 on release, so despite making a loss on the consoles, Microsoft generates a lot of income through the sales of games and gaming passes. It’s not surprising that their profits have increased during the pandemic with more people spending longer at home and less time commuting.”
He added: “Microsoft knows that they can sell their consoles for a loss and still make money, especially if they keep bringing out new consoles meaning gamers have to purchase new versions of their games to continue playing.”
Methodology:
- ManySpins.com used Wikipedia’s list of ‘best-selling Xbox One games’ to find the 20 best-selling video games on Xbox One.
- They then searched each game on Metacritic to find the user score for each game, specifically the Xbox One editions.
- ManySpins.com then ranked the games from best to worst based on their Metacritic user score to find which best-selling Xbox Ones games players were most disappointed by.
- Number of copies potentially wasted was calculated by multiplying the games’ total sales from Wikipedia’s list by the percentage of negative reviews on Metacritic. These are approximate values only.
All data is correct as of 10/05/2021, but is subject to change.
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