Honestly Avowed did decent imo. It had limited marketing and reached 19k steam ccu. I think it had more players than Indiana Jones. I do find it weird they don't market their games and rely on word of mouth but they go about that in the wrong way which is why there's not much fanfare with their games imo.
Gamers will hate to hear this but most people don't want to play AA games. Sure, you get games like Ex33, but for every Ex33 you have hundreds of AA games that people pass on. It's why Microsoft going AA route with their games didn't catch much fanfare. The only way that did massive was Sea of Thieves, but all of the others didn't really capture many gamers. State of Decay performed pretty well for what it was but other than that most people didn't really touch their AA games. The internet always preaches about smaller games and AA, but most people gravitate towards grand AAA games because they feel it's it's more valuable. It's why you look at any sales chart it mainly consists of AAA games if you look at top 25 sales of the year.
Theoretically, focusing on shorter dev time and smaller titles would've made sense for gamepass approach. However, Microsoft is bad at marketing their games and don't know how to produce quality quickly. If they were able to go at the pace of Sega, then they would be in a much different situation .Sega has the formula in how game pass should work. Them being able to produce Yakuza/Like a Dragon game, Atlus RPG, and other games every 2 years is what Microsoft should've been working towards when they pivoted towards game pass. Of course you can still have your AAA games, but it should've mainly consisted of AA games and other games that are quick to make. Taking 5+ years to make Hellblade 2 is malpratice for how bad it flopped.
Microsoft thing is interesting if they were to go exclusvie. I don't think these games are enough to make playstation gamers move or undecided gamers to move to xbox. If you're an undecided gamer would you choose Indiana Jones, Hellbalde 2, South of Midnight, Avowed, The Outer World 2,Oblviion Remastered, Doom, etc. or would you choose Spider man 2, Ghost of Yotei, Astro Bot, Helldivers 2, Stellar Blade, Rise of Ronin, Silent Hill 2, Death Stranding 2, etc. I think even Sony at their weakest will still make people gravitate towards to Sony becasue their friends are most likely there and their name is worht more. They would of course get more hardware sales, but it still won't be enough because people outside of North America and UK don't f with Microsoft consoles.
