South of Midnight Tops 1 Million Players in Less Than a Month - Sales
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 May 2025 / 7,075 Views
Compulsion Games CEO and Studio Head Guillaume Provost revealed to Game Rant South of Midnight has surpassed one million players in less than a month.
"I can confidently say we've had more than a million players on South Midnight since its release," said Provost.
Provost said the setting of the American Deep South has been underutilized in video games.
"When we had the discussion originally, I thought that that specific region was pretty underserved in the video game market, " he said. "Kentucky Route Zero is a good example, and you've seen it portrayed in Red Dead Redemption. But no one had really kind of dived in and mined the mythology of the area and looked at what made it iconic."
Provost said Compulsion's role in Xbox Game Studios "is not to make blockbusters like Call of Duty, but to provide games that add distinctiveness, where we can either serve audiences that haven’t been served before or create projects that add diversity to the portfolio."
He concluded, "I'm passionate about that being part of the mission for the studio moving into the future. In terms of what audience, what experiences, and what areas of the world we'll represent next, I can't tell you. But I think it's an important role within Xbox for us to be a brand that appeals to people from all walks of life."
South of Midnight released for the Xbox Series X|S, PC via Steam and Microsoft Store, and Xbox Game Pass on April 8.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Bluesky.
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This was honestly a really charming game. There's a lot there they could build on potentially
It launched without much of anything around it.... and was on gamepass. It should be doing 1m in a month alone from that.
Probably the most comparable title is Hi-Fi rush, which did 2m in about 5 weeks, so a little bit behind.
More interestingly no player numbers were ever given for Hellblade 2 and Avowed. I think those are the only first party titles with no player numbers.
Hellblade 1 sold 1m copies in 10 months, so I would be kind of surprised if Hellblade 2 didn't at least manage 1m players in the last year since it released, between sales and Gamepass. They probably just didn't want to announce the milestone for whatever reason.
Thats not very good considering this has been on Gamepass since day 1.
What exactly are you comparing it to? AAA established IPs that reach 10m users with Gamepass?
I think all we can gleam from 1m is that it's not a bomb. Sounds pretty solid for an AA, more niche adventure title not available on Playstation where those titles tend to do better. Not necessarily impressive but clearly people are checking it out.
Success is relative to a scope of a game. Some games are successful hitting 500k sold, others need 5m. For "players", where we don't know how many are sold copies, nor how many played the game for more than 10minutes, we have even less data points for what equates to a success. And then there's demographic data, like whether the majority of this 1m checked out other recent MS Gamepass releases or whether the game is attracting newer audiences or typically less active demographics. Too many variables to throw out conclusions without further info.
The real question is, how many game pass users actually got GP for this game? Because those who have it either way dont finance nw/more games. Still sad there's no physical release. Would have bought otherwise. Now I had make due with a YT LP
:sadge:
Probably not tbh... I would not be surprised if like 90% of those 1m are from gamepass. If there are like 34m gamepass people, and it launched in a without much of anything around it.... its safe to assume like a million gamepass players gave it a try to just to see, what it was like.
1m players in a month is really not bad for a AA game
There is like 35 million subscribers to Gamepass and only 1 million checked it out? Thats not good either.
1m people checked out a game in 1 month is great brand recognition
Not for a "free" first party game.
Not all GP subscribers have Ultimate, and many of them are still on Xbox One, which cannot play South of Midnight.
Also, I never understood the argument of ''only X checked it out in Y time, so not good''. Why would subscribers rush to play a game if they intend on staying subscribed? The game is from MS and thus is never leaving the subscription, and unlike movies/TV shows, most games are way more time-consuming, and backlogs are a real thing. There is no reason to rush to play a MS first-party game that will forever be there, and not try to finish a backlog of games, of which many won't be in the subscription forever.
Then no game can ever be called a flop then. If gamers are just so patient and havent gotten around to it yet. Maybe it will do well in 10 years...
There is reason to rush and prioritize a game if you really want to play it.
1m players in a month is not a flop. My question to you is why do you care so much on if it sold or being played?
Well its interesting to talk about games that do well and games that dont. Why do you care so much that this game does well?
I really don't care, but a good game or it's success isn't solely based the old dinosaurs method of phyiscal sales. If 1m people played the game in a month, that's alot of people turning there head and using their time to check out the game.
Yeah, the old dinosaur way of making money off your games. Good will is all companies need to survive...
These companies are making billions off not selling phyiscal copies. Infact the IOI is greater via digital and services because there is no middle man to pay, where phyiscal media requires losing cuts of profits. Hence the dinosaur term.
Laughs in clair Obscure
