Microsoft Dismisses Hi-Fi Rush's Poor Sales Rumors.

According to Jeff Grubb, the game "didn't make the money it needed to make"; Aaron Greenberg, Vice-president of Xbox Games Marketing, quickly dismissed it.

Hi-Fi Rush is Xbox's latest exclusive game. Developed by Tango Works, and published by Bethesda, the rhythm-based action game was released on January 25, 2023 on Xbox and PC.

One of the main selling points of the game was its immediate availability on Xbox Game Pass, however, it seems that the game will only be available digitally; there is no information if the game will get a physical release later on, however, based on precedents, this could change in the future.

Cuphead was another game that had a digital-only release in 2017. The game was an Xbox and PC exclusive. Because of its huge success, Studio MDHR later released the game on the Nintendo Switch, in 2019; a year later, it came on the PlayStation 4. The hectic platformer got its much-awaited physical release on June 30, 2022, which includes all the content released for the game so far.

Xbox Game Pass is to blame

Industry insider Jeff Grubb mentioned on his podcast, Game Mess Decides, that “based on what I’ve heard, it just straight up didn’t make the money it needed to make; it got good reviews, and the buzz was good, so where do you put the blame for something like that?”

Rumors suggest that a huge percentage of the game's players come from Xbox Game Pass, and not digital sales. This performance indicator can be a bit misleading because the majority of Xbox users already have Game Pass. The platform might make it difficult to determine the game's raw sales as well.

The game service by Microsoft has been under scrutiny because they removed the $1 for a month promotion, and have increased the price of the service in emerging markets. Looking at all this from such a perspective might suggest that the service is costing Microsoft a lot of money, and that eventually they might bail on it.

Dismissing the rumors

Aaron Greenberg, Vice-president of Xbox Games Marketing said that the game was a 'break out hit' in all of their internal 'key measurements'. The industry has long shifted away from raw, monthly sales numbers for hardware and software to determine its success.

NPD was one of the companies that released periodical sales numbers that a lot of industry insiders and media in general used to determine a game's success. Nowadays, there are a lot of indicators besides units sold that can determine if a game has been engaging.

Digital platforms are the reason why those reports have evolved into something much more complex. For an external consulting company, it is impossible to determine how many times a digital game has been downloaded, especially if it is available on subscription services like Xbox Game pass or PlayStation Plus.

Companies like Sony or Microsoft use internal key performance indicators (KPIs) to determine the amount of engagement a game has. Not only that, they can know if their subscription services are still aligned with their business strategy.

Grubb reacted to this on his Giant Bomb podcast by saying "OK, that’s fine, we’ll leave it as that." This suggests that he trusts his source, and that Microsoft, on the other hand, is looking at the game's performance and engagement from a whole different perspective, going beyond raw sales.

[Source: Insider Gaming]