In a post on the Xbox news site Mike Nichols, Xbox's Corporate VP of Marketing broke down the numbers for 2015 as well as the upcoming releases for the new year.
The report breaks down the high points of the last 365 days for Xbox, covering sales figures, gamer engagement and fun fact statistics. First and foremost is that Dec 28th, 2015 had more gamers on Xbox Live than any other day in the service's history.
The post also states that every game in their exclusive Holiday 2015 lineup sold "over 1 million units," These games are Halo 5: Guardians, Forza Motorsport 6, Gears of War: Ultimate Edition and Rise of the Tomb Raider although that's a rather broad view of Holiday 2015, going all the way back to August.
Of those titles, Rise of the Tomb Raider is the most interesting. Coming on the heels of the received Tomb Raider reboot in 2013, there were concerns on how timed exclusivity would impact the game.. The 1 million mark is a strong figure for a single platform release however, so it seems that Xbox's bet on timed exclusivity for the title has paid off.
After all the fun numbers, we get a release schedule for the Xbox/Windows titles coming in 2016:
- Gears of War 4 (Xbox One) – Multiplayer Beta in Spring 2016/Launch in Fall 2016
- Quantum Break (Xbox One) – April 5, 2016
- Halo Wars 2 (Xbox One & Windows 10) – Fall 2016
- Crackdown 3 (Xbox One) – Multiplayer in Summer 2016
- Fable Legends Open Beta (Xbox One & Windows 10) – Spring 2016
- ReCore (Xbox One & Windows 10) – 2016
- Sea of Thieves (Xbox One & Windows 10) – 2016
- Gigantic (Xbox One & Windows 10) – 2016
- Killer Instinct: Season 3 (Xbox One & Windows 10) – March 2016
- Gears of War: Ultimate Edition (Windows 10) – Spring 2016
- Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition (Xbox One & Windows 10) – Spring 2016
- Cobalt (Xbox One, Xbox 360 & Steam) – Feb. 2, 2016
Of note is ReCore, the new IP from Keiji Inafune, revealing both a Windows edition and its delay from Spring to just 2016. Also of note is that most of the titles coming to PC are coming to Windows 10 and not Steam - the one exception is Cobalt but it further emphasizes Microsoft's desire to build their own ecosystem there.
All in all the post is worth a look if you're curious about Xbox's numbers over the last 12 months or you just really really like obscure statistics.
Quick Take
Reading between the lines a little, its clear that Xbox doesn't want to go toe-to-toe with Playstation right now. All the statistics are relative to past years for Xbox, sales figures impressive regardless of competition or meaningless padding such as "over 200 new features for gamers in 2015". That's not to say that Xbox didn't have a good year, but they are still solidly in 2nd place.
