Terrible numbers for Xbox in Europe no matter which way you slice it in terms of hardware sales. It's one thing to have a 35% decline YoY in a month with no exclusives, another to have a 35% decline with your biggest exclusive in two years launching. Although September 2022 could've been a particularly strong month for Xbox if we consider this comment:
Europe Sep 2022: Did we get last year platform break down?
There were 394,000 video game consoles sold across Europe in September. However, it should be noted the hardware charts exclude two major European countries - the UK and Germany.
Console sales were down 20 percent compared to September 2021, but it was up over 29 percent compared to August 2022.
Nintendo Switch was the best-selling console across the tracked markets in Europe. Sales were up over 11 percent compared to August.
PlayStation 5 sales were up 28 percent month-over-month. Xbox Series X|S saw the biggest increase with sales nearly double compared to August.
But that could just be copium as the internet slang goes. Adding on, even if you consider that, the decline could still be easily in the double digits (~10%) in the month of the largest Xbox exclusive since Halo Infinite (Forza Horizon if we're just looking at Europe specifically)
Regardless, it is becoming a serious discussion on how Xbox can turn around any brand momentum. The only thing I can see turning anything around in any serious degree (rather then just stabilizing the decline) for Xbox hardware sales globally is a consistent cadence of well reviewed and received exclusives (Starfield was the former, not really the latter with the love and hate relationship the internet has with it) over the next bit of the generation and early on next generation. Along with exclusive Call of Duty marketing (but Xbox market has honestly been shite, if there's any team in Xbox that probably
needs to be restructured, its the marketing department).
The latter would likely be significantly more effective in the Americas (USA specifically) which, while a big market, doesn't solve absolutely shite sales in other markets, although, isn't Latin America decent for Xbox? But we don't get basically any sales data from there though so it's just vibes. Which makes it inherently bad analysis.
To be honest, Europe might still be a decent market for Xbox as a whole considering they release most of their games on Steam and the EU is big on PC gaming. Starfield sold 100k in Germany on PC, or at least I remember reading it. Of course revenue wise they'd obviously prefer having significant hardware sales in the EU. Edit: The thought occurred to me that Xbox could potentially be focusing on game sales on PC in Europe, with focus on PC gamepass over consoles. But I think that's getting closer to conspiratorial/copium nonsense and not serious analysis
Its why the consistent cadence of good well received exclusives is important because it has the effect in which there are games on Xbox you can't get on PlayStation. Makes it more then just a worse PlayStation. It would still have the issue of not having IPs such as Last of Us, God of War, Horizon (popular enough I suppose), and Goddamn Spiderman. But if, lets say, Clockwork Revolution, the Fable Remake, South of Midnight, Hellblade II, Avowed, probably some other IPs I'm forgetting (they have like, fucking 40 development studios. I'm almost certain I am missing something) are all
collectively well recieved (or at least the large majority of them). That would give the Xbox IP more brand strength. Reasons to own one besides Forza, and I guess Starfield (speaking strictly Europe to clarify in this sentence).
Still an easy third place due to digital lockin and sheer PlayStation brand power, but I would like to believe (because I am an optimist despite my very cynical attitude towards the internet as a whole) it would improve Xbox hardware sales. Also COD marketing will do things. Even with declined sales of COD its extremely hard to believe having COD marketing would literally do
nothing hardware wise even in Europe.
Regardless, Xbox is likely going to be in a pretty fine financial position despite the hardware side sucking ass if only due to their high amount of revenue from the Xbox stores, digital sales on Steam (have to account for something right?), Minecraft, subscriptions, Xbox Gold (or well, Gamepass Core), microtransactions and now the cold (at least) over a billion in Net Income from ABK
alone. Almost certain Xbox heads still would rather want strong hardware sales though.
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