Obsidian’s new high fantasy roleplaying game Avowed may reach nearly 6 million players in its first month on the market, new estimates from data group MindGame Data indicate.
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Avowed may be a popular game that will be played by 5.9 million people across Xbox and PC in its first month, with full game sales and Xbox Game Pass subscribers combined. The figure comes from a quick newsletter from MindGame Data, a firm that collects what’s called “mindshare” data and uses that to estimate the potential playerbase of that game for a given period of time. These aren’t confirmed or verified figures, and it’s important to know that mindshare sources data from searches on Google as well as highlight data from YouTube and Twitch.
“Based on digital behaviors of billions of gamers, mindSHARE is an all-in-one metric measuring a game’s relative popularity. mindSHARE is used for trend, competitor, and marketing measurement and is directly correlated with sales and players.mindSHARE trends are cross-referenced against PC players and social media, ensuring full coverage of gaming trends.”
Now that that is out of the way, let’s take a look at what the report says.
In its first month, Avowed is expected to reach around 5.9 million players, more than Indiana Jones apparently had (based on this data estimate). Of course, Avowed isn’t yet a full month old, so this is forward-thinking; a forecasted estimate.
“This estimate is based on mindSHARE, search volume, streaming hours, video content engagement, Steam concurrent players, and Game Pass subscriber counts at launch,” the newsletter reads.
So…is this a win for Microsoft?
No one can tell us but Microsoft. And they probably won’t. It’s extremely difficult to quantify Microsoft’s internal measurements for success because, well, there’s so many metrics and all of them have different levels of weight and importance.
There’s game sales, in-game purchases/DLC, player counts, influence on subscription numbers, and the muddied lines of how all of these paths come together under the banner of “high-margin businesses.”
In any case, MindGame goes on to highlight how it believes Microsoft quantifies success for Avowed, as well as other Game Pass games. It’s worth noting that this process is unlikely as straightforward as laid out here, and that something like Avowed would not be expected to substantially drive up Game Pass subscriptions–that kind of responsibility would go to something like Call of Duty. The way Microsoft’s games business is now set up means that these metrics all carry different forms of recognition and accounting, yet none of it matters if the games aren’t actually making a profit in some way.
It’ll take some time to fully evaluate Avowed’s success, or lack thereof, on all platforms, but we certainly won’t get access to that kind of in-depth data.
