Xbox found a lot of success in 2021, releasing some of the year’s biggest games. The company gave players a variety of options to access those games, offering them on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and on PC. This paid off in a big way for the publisher, as Xbox Game Studios titles made up 25% of the top 12 selling games on Steam this year. The site released a list of 2021’s top 12 games in terms of gross revenue, and the list included Halo Infinite, Forza Horizon 5, and Age of Empires IV. The exact positions of the games were not revealed.
The full list of games can be found in a Tweet from @BenjiSales embedded below.
Microsoft / Xbox Game Studios have become one of the biggest publishers on PC / Steam with 3 of the Top 10 highest Gross Revenue games of the year in 2021 being 1st party releases
Congrats to @aarongreenberg @XboxP3 @BondSarah_Bond and everyone else at Xbox
— Benji-Sales (@BenjiSales) December 27, 2021
Availability is a big part of Xbox’s strategy right now, and it seems to be paying off for the publisher! Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5 both got a lot of positive attention over the last few months, and the fact that these games could be accessed from so many different platforms no doubt helped. In 2021, we saw PlayStation put a greater focus on the PC market, but most of the games the company offered had been available for several years on PlayStation 4. In Xbox’s case, these games are being released the same day across platforms.
Some of the fans replying to @BenjiSales pointed out that it’s interesting to see these games doing so well on Steam, when all three are accessible through Xbox Game Pass for PC. Some Game Pass skeptics have worried that the service could hurt actual game sales, but Steam’s list would seem to indicate that isn’t the case. Instead, it looks like different platform users are taking advantage of the options that work best for them. It’s possible some of these PC gamers could eventually gravitate towards Game Pass, or they just might stick with buying the games on Steam. Regardless, it seems like Xbox’s strategy worked in a big way this year!
Did you purchase any of these games on Steam? Are you surprised Xbox has had so much success on the platform? Let us know in the comments or share your thoughts directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp to talk all things gaming!
