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Microsoft's 'Forza' Video Game Francise Tops $1 Billion in Sales (xbox.com)
Here's another area where Microsoft, whose cloud services are doing very well, continues to make a lot of money: video games. Microsoft has minted its fifth billion-dollar video-game franchise. The "Forza" racing series in December topped $1 billion in lifetime sales since the first game's release 12 years ago, Microsoft said. From company's blogpost: As of December, more than 14 million unique players were involved in the Forza community on Xbox One and Windows 10, the award-winning Forza Horizon 3 sold through 2.5 million units, and Forza continued its run as the best-selling racing franchise of this console generation. Additionally, our online racing community expanded significantly: over three million players joined us online each month and we launched the Forza Racing Championship, an eSports league for players of all skill levels to compete for glory and real-world prizes. "Since the beginning, Forza has combined stunning graphics, racing's leading simulation engine, and an emphasis on fun and accessibility," said Phil Spencer, head of Xbox. "With the Forza series, Turn 10 Studios has built the world's largest racing community. We couldn't be more proud of their success." Other game franchises in Microsoft's billion-dollar club are "Halo," "Minecraft," "Gears of War", and "Age of Empires".
Funnel money from the American Empire directly to India.
Italia!
Is MS making $1 Billion in sales by forcing people in Canada to speak French? What sort of video game is this? Does it try and hypnotize you and make you download French tutorials? This sort of shit should be banned from sales.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
is that when Fran Drescher gets specific about a subject?
Come on, Slashdot editors, don't you have anyone proofread these before you post them to the front page? Or at least run them through a spellchecker?
While Microsoft currently owns all these properties, they didn't create them. It's not like Microsoft is full of creative people who can design a new product (or game) that is compelling enough to generate these kinds of sales.
It's easy to wait for a winner to come alo and then buy it.
In a few years, we'll be seeing news that Microsoft Minecraft is still selling wildly. Yawn.
...does this mean the overall XBox ROI has finally been reached/surpassed (what, 18-19 years later?)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Much like Call of Duty, Microsoft is releasing far too frequently which will kill interest.
So if I understand well, the areas where Microsoft if winning money is the one they only invest in? Does this mean that Micro$oft is slowly becoming an investment company?
Seriously, I can't help but notice they emphasize monetary value over unit throughput. Not to mention "Forza continued its run as the best-selling racing franchise of this console generation." means jack shit when GT Sport doesn't release until later this year.
The Gran Turismo series has sold over $4 Billion as of 2013.
http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Gran_Turismo
I can understand Microsoft trumpeting their sales figures, but they are not even close to matching their main rival. Still, I'm sure that both franchises have been hugely profitable over the years.
Lighten up Francis....
Dollar was much stronger back then. Against Euro, against Yen, today they are more or less even.
Now get on the horn to Alan Hartman and tell him to start paying his employees some decent fucking paychecks for a change, stop being a shit-eating douche in team meetings, stop treating his PA like he's starring in a Mad Men episode, and quit outsourcing the entire fucking art pipeline to sweatshops in India and Vietnam that don't give a shit and half-ass everything. Maybe ditch the douchebag vendor company you brought on to micromanage the SME test team, too.
Oh, yeah. And that cabal of partner-level FTEs that run the place who keep making stupid tight-fisted decisions that are only prevented from sinking the ship because they studio has a publishing juggernaut shoving their crap in everybody's face? Those pricks spend most of their time and energy trying to backstab each other out of the pool of royalties, so if you RIF those half-dozen fuckheads and put some real leadership in place, you'll have a genuine GT killer in short order, instead of something that only sounds like one with the help of turd-polishing in company press releases.
Have they even made a profit ON gaming in their whole console business?
I know the RRoD cost them a fuckton of billions, was it like, $3.3 billion? I think it probably grew since that was early on during RRoD, not during the period of replacements that all horribly failed.
Also, I lol'd at Minecraft. Then I was sad. /v/ where it started and grew up.
It's sad that the game is now being aimed at ADD and autistic kiddies. (actually those people, not the bastardized epic maymay meaning)
So far from the horrible (im)mature dicks of 4chan
The original intentions for this game was a 3D dwarf fortress. But then Mojang happened and it was alllll downhill from there.
Meanwhile over at Toadyland, trying to deal with the disastrous MOUNTAIN of spaghetti code he has forged over the years. Oh god someone force help on him, he won't listen!
Oh, they'll definitely make back those billions it took to buy the company. But they will kill what little soul remains in the Minecraft community.
Oh well, there's still Minetest. Superior in every way.
A lot of that is simply because Gran Turismo is two full console generations older than Forza.
If you take the PS1 and PS2 games out of the totals, GT still outsells Forza, but not by a whole lot.
And Forza 6 Apex is free to download on Windows (with paid DLC), so who the heck knows what that's doing to the total player base.
The second Gran Turismo for PS2 was released around the same time as the original Forza Motorsport on the Xbox, so it would seem appropriate to include it in a comparison with Forza, rather than taking it out as you suggest.
The last Gran Turismo was released in 2013, so using your metrics we should ignore Forza Horizon 2 (2014), Forza Motorsport 6 (2015) and Forza Horizon 3 (2016), or we would be giving an unfair advantage to the Forza total.
When you compare the period when both GT and Forza were active franchises (2005-2013), GT sells way more copies than Forza.