After Outriders Performance At Launch, Square Enix Commends Xbox Game Pass

Rewinding back to the launch of Outriders back at the start of April, the performance of the game was left uncertain as developer People Can Fly ships a new IP under a new publishing deal with Square Enix. While the game studio is reputable to handle a AAA project as such, shipping a new series is left to be a risky approach with many namely franchises continuing to sell millions. However, the deal for it to release day one on Xbox Game Pass altered the notion towards the release.

Shortly following the game hitting store shelves, Square Enix celebrated when discovering that 100K players logged into Outriders in the first 24 hours of the title releasing. But, that energy continued to build up leading well into the following weeks. By the first month of the game being available, People Can Fly shared that roughly 3 million players logged into Outriders by then.

Now according to Square Enix, and transcribed by gamesindustry.biz, Outriders performed exceptionally well thanks to Xbox Game Pass. The game has “gotten off to a good start,” Square Enix CEO Yosuke Matsuda explained.

In addition, we have been pleasantly surprised as the digital sales ratio for the title have been very high, and the number of active users has also beaten our expectations. We believe that our decision to make Outriders available with Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass as soon as the title launched also worked in our favor. (to build an installed base for the game).

Noted, this is not the first instance that the monthly subscription service has been recognized to be a safe-proof approach for new releases. With the then-upcoming release for MLB The Show 21 when debuting for Xbox, Ampere Analysis deemed Xbox Game Pass to be a “risk-adverse” approach for developers & publishers in search for a rock-solid path for a game when launching.

Most recently, Microsoft unveiled its next major lineup for Xbox Game Pass during its recent Xbox-Bethesda E3 Showcase. In that, titles like Yakuza: Like a Dragon & Back 4 Blood are to be available for the service. You can read the full report by heading here.

Did you play Outriders when it shipped this spring?

Outriders is out now for Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, and Stadia.

Source: gamesindustry.biz