While December wasn’t the biggest month in terms of big game releases, there was one big exclusive game that did get released, and that was Indiana Jones and the Great Circle by MachineGames. It was made for the Xbox Series X/S and PC, at least for now, and was meant to recapture the feeling of the original trilogy starring Harrison Ford while also continuing the legacy of Indiana Jones in the gaming space, which is more substantial than you might think. Anyway, the question was, given the state of the franchise after the last movie, would there be a lot of people willing to play the game?
The answer seems to be “yes,” but there is some context as to just how well the title is doing. Such “context” is something Microsoft has been familiar with recently. During an earnings call, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the following about the adventure title:
“We saw rave reviews of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which has already been played by more than four million people.”
Now, at first, that might sound like a resounding victory for the game, especially since it seems that both gamers and critics liked the title. However, the phrase “been played by more than four million people” isn’t the same as “the game has sold four million units.” Much like many other big-name Xbox titles, Indy’s latest game was available “Day One” on Xbox Game Pass. That’s key to note because you can already have the Game Pass before a big-name title comes out and then jump right in to play it. It’s not the same as straight-up buying it.
To be fair, that still means that four million people played it across the Xbox Series X/S and PC, but it doesn’t highlight how many people actually bought it and, thus, made money for Microsoft. That’s a key problem for the company right now, as it’s been trying to make the Xbox Game Pass an incredibly profitable entity, yet it’s struggling at every turn. It doesn’t help that the Xbox Series X/S isn’t moving many units, and thus, Game Pass subscriber numbers are stalling. Some even indicated that the current number of users would need to double before Microsoft sees any profit, and that’s not likely to happen anytime soon.
Furthermore, as highlighted earlier, the game is also going multiplatform later this year via a PS5 port. So, it’ll be interesting to see what “hard numbers” it gets there versus on Xbox.
