Xbox sales in Europe “flatlining”, with one major company saying “I don’t know why we bothered supporting it”
Xbox might be in “real trouble” as a hardware manufacturer, according to GamesIndustry.biz head Christopher Dring. And some third-party publishers reportedly wonder whether it is worth making versions of their games for Microsoft’s console.
“I heard it from a very prominent company and one not so prominent — was Xbox’s performance in Europe is just flatlining,” he said (thanks VGC). “You can follow our monthly coverage in the games market and you can see that Xbox sales are falling, and it’s been falling all throughout last year and it’s falling even harder this year.”
According to the GSD data, Xbox Series X|S sales in Europe fell 47% year-over-year in February. PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch also experienced declines, but not so dramatic, with their sales down 2% and 17% YoY respectively.
As a result, some third-party publishers are wondering whether releasing their games on the Xbox platform is sustainable from a business perspective. One company told Dring that they are “putting in a lot of effort” to make Series S and X versions of their game, but “for us the market is PC and PS5.”
