Recently a few rumors were brought up by unnamed Kotaku sources that Microsoft, the Xbox One, and all other projects under the gaming division weren’t doing as well as Microsoft once thought. The “unnamed sources” from the now-closed Lionhead Studios stated that Halo 5 and Minecraft weren’t selling “as expected”, Windows 10 was a disaster and that there should have been double the Xbox One consoles in the hands of gamers that there currently are. Well, let’s look at these claims.
Firstly, Windows 10 launched in July 2015, and one year later they have reached nearly 400 million installs on mobile, desktop and console. Microsoft stated that they wanted to reach 1 billion devices by 2018, and it seems like they’re at least from the last official number, 35% in. We recently did an analysis confirming that they were on track to hit that target by that year. According to the “source”, they stated that the install base wasn’t growing fast enough, which is completely false. Windows 10 grows by around 50 million installs in around two months.
Also, the source made the claim that the Windows 10 Store was an unmitigated “disaster” and that Rise of the Tomb Raider has sold 98% of its copies on Steam. Unfortunately, we don’t have any official numbers from Microsoft or Square Enix to back this up, other than that Rise of the Tomb Raider sold “well over 1 million units” on Xbox One before it launched on Windows. Steam Spy places the game at 750,000 units sold. Currently, Rise of the Tomb Raider is the 52nd best selling digital game on Windows 10. Considering that figure, it appears that the 98% sold on Steam comment is completely an utterly incorrect if it sold 750,000 units. The math just doesn’t add up.
The Windows 10 Store—from the last official numbers issued by Microsoft—was visited 5 billion times since Windows 10 launched in July. Currently, the best-selling game on Windows 10 is Minecraft, with Gears of War: Ultimate Edition at number five, and Quantum Break in the seventh position. These games are outselling titles such as Lara Croft Go, which was labeled a massive success by Square Enix. Minecraft has been the number one best-selling game consistently (except for a few weeks when Quantum Break launched). The fact that the Lionhead source claimed it was a disaster is, frankly speaking, a total lie.
Minecraft, which managed to sell over 106 million copies, became the second best-selling game of all time, only beaten by Tetris. Other games like Forza Motorsport reached 11 million players on Xbox One, between the three titles sold on the platform since launch. This number swelled by 3 million players since Forza Motorsport 6 launched in September 2015.
Besides that, the source claimed that Halo 5 was a flop, and didn’t manage to even remotely meet expectations from Microsoft. Halo 5 managed to hit $400 million in first-week sales, broken down between hardware and software. Microsoft also announced that Halo 5 was one of the titles that broke the 1 million sales figure alongside Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, Forza Motorsport 5 and Rise of the Tomb Raider in November last year. Yesterday, Frank O’Connor, in a response on NeoGAF, stated that Halo 5 sold over 5 million units in the first three months of being available. Again, this was a response to unsubstantiated claims. It’s clear that Halo 5, which launched over nine months ago, is a success and only outperformed by Halo 3, which launched late in the Xbox 360 life cycle. So the unnamed Lionhead source fibbed here too.
When it comes to the Xbox One, nobody is refuting the claims that it hasn’t been a great success story. Since launch, it only managed to sell just over 20 million units worldwide, with 12 million units being sold in America according to estimates by alleged insiders. To put it in perspective, Microsoft announced that the Xbox 360 managed to sell around 10 million in America in the same time frame and that the Xbox 360 sold 30 million units a year later worldwide. Unfortunately, we don’t have official sales numbers since Microsoft don’t offer these to the public but considering that it’s outperforming the Xbox 360 during the same period, it’s definitely not too shabby.
Fable Legends was a failed project that cost Microsoft over $75 million in development costs according to sources. The game, which aimed to be a free-to-play title for Xbox One, initially got “delayed” because of the demands from Microsoft for it to run on the DirectX 12 engine and Windows 10. However, the team couldn’t bring themselves to meet these demands and Microsoft shelved the game, and closed the studio. Lionhead Studios reformed and started their own project called Fable Fortunes that is currently on Kickstarter. Fable didn’t manage to gain traction in the community even with the game on early access, and many critics called it “bland and buggy”.
The last time Lionhead Studios released a game, which was Fable 3, it was widely expected to sell over 5 million units worldwide on Xbox 360. According to the closest estimate for the game, it barely broke 1 million units. The Fable franchise, however loved by fans, has never been a sales success story, and with Lionhead being a money pit for Microsoft, it was understandable for them to cut their losses. The Fable franchise is being licensed to the new Lionhead development team for Fable Fortunes, and that seems to be a better way to go about it than letting it die out. I hope this article helped clarify those baseless rumors made my an alleged Lionhead Studios employee who I doubt even exists. That my friends is a discussion for another day.
Dreyer was a regular ICXM contributor between 2016–2017, publishing 139 articles across opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative. They post on X as @dreyer_smit.